Army to cut back on education?

OTB has the story here. I think this is a bad, bad idea.

I've posted a lot on military education (links here). It is not a substitute for experience, but neither can experience substitute for Leavenworth.

James correctly points out that we did this in World War II but is not supportive of Rumsfeld's move.

The World War II experience shows the danger of this move. This is what Lieutenant General Leonard D. Holder, Jr., and historian Williamson Murray wrote in the Spring 1998 issue of the Joint Forces Quarterly:

Despite the tributes U.S. military leaders lavished on the role of PME in preparing them for World War II, education fell into decline after the war. The Cold War with its monolithic dependence on nuclear weapons, which required little adaptation, was one reason. With a constant threat, there was less cause to study the complexities of strategy and war, particularly given the fact that America emphasized deterrence rather than combat. More-over, a generational shift in the l950s brought the junior officers of World War II to command positions. They had joined the military in the 1930s and gone to war as lieutenants and captains with-out
receiving PME and returned home as colonels and generals. As a result, many discounted the role of PME in military professionalism. By the late l950s the services had allowed professional military education to drift.

It should be no surprise, then, that we struggled with the strategic challenges posed by North Vietnam in SE Asia. The senior leadership of the army had not schooled themselves or their officer corps as the WWII generation had. Moreover, they were not prepared to meet the arguments of the Whiz Kids when the quagmire was born.