Here is an excerpt from Dr. Bassford's reply A Response to Tony Corn's "Clausewitz in Wonderland" at the The Clausewitz Homepage:

... Nor is Clausewitz responsible for the smothering political correctness that makes it virtually impossible even to discuss things like the strategic history of Islam. Personally, I am still recovering from the high-pitched institutional whining that ensued when I made remarks on that subject virtually identical to Corn's a few weeks ago at one of the nation's premier institutions for strategic education. And almost every PME effort to discuss the "anthropology" of Islam that I have experienced has immediately degenerated into an utterly irrelevant analysis of the finer points of Koranic theology. Corn makes some (seemingly) favorable allusions to the potential value to strategists of understanding modern evolutionary theory (i.e., to Richard Dawkins and his memes). Great stuff! But mention evolutionary theory to a US-government audience and you'll spend the next hour debating the Book of Genesis with folks on the right side of the room; a week later you'll be reading articles by lefties in the Washington Post accusing you of advocating new eugenics laws banning reproduction by racial minorities.

The errors Corn describes originate in American cultural attitudes that certainly do not derive from Clausewitz. Iindeed, it is those cultural attitudes that drive the frequently ludicrous manner in which Clausewitz's ideas are used and taught. Those attitudes will not magically disappear once every copy of On War has been safely burned. If anthropology becomes the new strategic rage, then educators who may be "men of one book" (or even "men of one set of Cliffs notes") will be subjecting students to equally misleading doctrinal discourses on Margaret Mead. (I'm not joking here: Read John Keegan's anthropological absurdities in his A History of Warfare, which are every bit as asinine as his comments on Clausewitz.)

There are a great many ideas in Corn's article that, however disjointed, are worthy of discussion. Rather than respond with my own theory-of-everything, let me focus briefly on Corn's very positive comments on thinking inside the US Marine Corps. Though I am evidently one of the "Clausewitzian petits maitres" Corn finds so objectionable, I know something at least about USMC doctrine, since I wrote small pieces of the current MCDP 1, Warfighting, and virtually all of MCDP 1-1, Strategy and MCDP 1-2, Campaigning (not to mention the Aviation Operations and Reconnaissance manuals…). The MCDPs did not spring full-blown from the pen of any academic, but emerged from an energetic debate within the Corps' leadership. They are, in fact, supremely eclectic works drawing on a vast array of ideas and influences. But only a poseur who had never even looked at the famous Warfighting manual's table of contents (for which I bear no responsibility whatsoever—its primary author, John Schmitt, is a self-professed "Sun Tzu guy") could write that they are "largely exempt from the Clausewitz regimen." Just look at the chapter and section titles: "Nature of War," "Theory of War," "Friction," etc., etc. Or scan the source documentation...