Rich Lowry

The Obama administration says that we need to end what it calls “the era of austerity” in Washington. Notably excluded from this admonition is the one department of government that is actually experiencing austerity worthy of the name.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel unveiled a military budget that will reduce the U.S. Army to pre-World War II levels. The spin is that this will be a smarter force better suited to 21st-century challenges, but everyone knows that it is all about accommodating the trillion dollars in defense cuts adopted during the recent Beltway budgetary wars.

We obviously aren’t...