‘Clarifying Moment’ (ATLANTIC)

Eliot A. Cohen writes in ATLANTIC magazine that we are in a “clarifying moment” in our national journey. His words are powerful.

Many conservative foreign-policy and national-security experts saw the dangers last spring and summer, which is why we signed letters denouncing not Trump’s policies but his temperament; not his program but his character.

We were right. And friends who urged us to tone it down, to make our peace with him, to stop saying as loudly as we could “this is abnormal,” to accommodate him, to show loyalty to the Republican Party, to think that he and his advisers could be tamed, were wrong.