Yes, I heard this song once on the radio. I groaned as I listened to the singer's textbook case of a red herring, and thought of how many people, on hearing this song, will be suckered in and think it actually makes sense.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/red-herring.html
Also Known as: Smoke Screen, Wild Goose Chase.
Description of Red Herring
A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to "win" an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:
- Topic A is under discussion.
- Topic B is introduced under the guise of being relevant to topic A (when topic B is actually not relevant to topic A).
- Topic A is abandoned.
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because merely changing the topic of discussion hardly counts as an argument against a claim.
The war is against Iraq and Saddam Hussein. What's that got to do with freedom? What does he mean, "backing down"? Backing down from what? What does attacking Iraq have to do with the towers falling? What does Osama bin Laden have to do with Bush's war against Iraq?
So, if somebody comes up to my house in the night and throws a rock through my window and then runs off and hides, is it okay for me to go beat up my neighbor across the street about it?