Having read Franklin Foer’s account in the October issue of The Atlantic describing the disastrous evacuation of Afghanistan, I was struck by what it did not contain. Nowhere in the months leading up to the withdrawal did a senior military leader question the choice of Kabul’s Karzai International Airport over the more defensible Bagram military air base.

The military chain of command knew an evacuation was imminent for months, and the Kabul airport was even more vulnerable to attack than the disastrous French position at Dien Bien Phu during the first Vietnam war. Despite that, not a single general officer, beginning with the secretary of defense — a retired general — raised an objection to the State Department’s choice of the Kabul Airport. One of two things happened here: Either they lacked the moral courage to speak up, or they did not know. In either case, I am convinced that the deplorable state of our military professional education system lies at the root of the problem.

A misguided attempt to reform professional military education (JPME) in the 1980s led by the late Ike Skelton and other military reformers in Congress mandated that masters-level degrees be granted at all command and staff colleges, as well as a required study in “jointness.” This forced all the military midlevel colleges to make room in their courses of study to accommodate the requirements of civilian academia to grant an advanced degree. What got lost in the mix was the serious study of the military profession that was formerly required.