Quote Originally Posted by Strickland
For the record, Clausewitz defined Absolute War in two ways, one of which was "peoples war," akin to that which he was familiar with in Spain from 1808. Based on this definition, this would mean that Iraq is an absolute war.
The other part of Clausewitz's idea of Absolute war is based in philosophy and pure theory, because Clausewitz used the "absolute" in a Kantian ideal sense of the word, being that in theory there is an ideal absolute but we live in reality and therfore cannot achive this ideal.

There is a good piece by Bruce Fleming which I have recently scanned through called "Can Reading Clausewitz Save Us from Future Mistakes?" which gives a good insight, I have read most of On War but the text can be very confusing and is contradictory in parts, even so I do believe that Clausewitz's theory of war is still unsurpassed and still relevent today.