You seem to be saying that by the time they are
playing at a level where general strategic advice
becomes applicable, they'll already have learned
it. This is a little circular.
Can you point where the circularity comes in?
I said that by the time the advice that can be learned from reading TAOW becomes useful they would have already learned it from their "battle" experience.
What I am saying is that reading it in book form will at most provide an "aha - that's why this strategy I've been contemplating is good!" moment, rather than a new idea about how to play the game.
I've been playing sc2 on and off (mostly off) since it was released and am a diamond league player & most of the time the game is still more about paying attention and tactics rather than high level strategy for me.
And I am pretty sure I would have not have even got to this level were I not already a somewhat competent wc3 player.
Maybe if you play 10+ hours per week of sc2 every week since it came out you would not need years to master the game, but as a busy professional with little free time and many games I doubt you could ever reach that level in a matter of months without having played a lot of sc1/wc3 beforehand.
EDIT: take a look at http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Battle.net_Leagues#Lea... - 80% of players are at platinum league or less, where the game definitively requires more getting over basic tactics than high level strategy. I would bet you can win with a marine/zergling/zealot rush in almost every match in these leagues if you have sufficiently superior micro to your opponent.