It's a viable point, and I partly agree with it. But the comparison I would offer is this- this is or was, supposed to be a support organization for 40 chapters, some of them had budgets that were nearing or over 1 million USD. They had several staff members, support personnel - how can you expect a back-office, support organization for 40 chapters that was envisioned to be self-sufficient some day, be smaller than the first 5 or 10 chapters they were supporting.
I'm more inclined to criticize the budget and spending priorities of the WMF, to tell the truth. The various budgets for the WCA primarily went wrong in assuming that the WMF itself would provide the cash, a truly odd plan given the role the WCA's boosters saw for it. My own opinion is that it was that intermediary, adversary role (which one person recently compared to a union opposing corporate interests) that doomed the WCA. But there is a good point to make about the envisioned support role. It's difficult to understand how a single lawyer, or a single firm, was intended to provide legal support of any utility to chapters in 40 countries. And pitching the WCA's level of professionalism at a degree to where it could help out the largest chapters seems like an odd strategy, when it's the smallest and newest that would need the kind of help the WCA could provide.
As a lot of other people have said, there is clearly a role out there for a support organization that helps chapters develop. But I don't think the WCA, as it has been modeled, is the right organization for that role. I don't know if it is the people who were involved at various points, or the environment in the movement at the time a formal body was proposed, but the attitude and approach for the WCA has been wrong for a long time and the WMF is right to not support the current incarnation.
~Nathan