George W Bush says Americans ‘don't pay attention to the lesson of 9/11’ on 25th anniversary

WASHINGTON, DC: Former President George W. Bush gave rare public comments Wednesday on the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, warning that Americans have become detached from what he believes is a key lesson of that day: that events overseas can have direct security implications for the United States.

Bush spoke about it at his presidential library in Dallas with Condoleezza Rice, who served as national security adviser at the time of the attacks and then went on to become secretary of state. 

George W Bush reflects on the lessons of 9/11

"Our nation occasionally goes through isolationist periods, where the attitude is, 'Well, we've got too many problems at home. Therefore, who cares about what happens overseas?'" said Bush, who wasn't yet eight months into his first term when the attacks occurred.

"Which really means to me they just don't pay attention to the lessons of 9/11, because what happens overseas matters to our national security at home."

He said that as people are "struggling against tyranny, it makes sense" for the US to get involved.

"We don't have to send troops," Bush said.

"We ought to at least stand with them and stand beside them because this is what we went through 250 years ago. And again, it's a belief that everybody wants to be free and we saw that in Afghanistan."

Bush waged a war in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks and then promoted the creation of a democratic government there after years of Taliban-imposed atrocities on the Afghan people.

Nevertheless, fighting continued for 20 years, becoming America's longest war, until the United States withdrew and Afghanistan fell back under the Taliban in 2021.

George W Bush recalls the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks

Bush and Rice also revisited the harrowing hours immediately following the attacks, describing a period when "every plane had become a missile" and officials scrambled to ground the nation's air traffic.

Bush recalled on Wednesday that he had been visiting an elementary school on September 11, 2001, when his then-chief of staff Andy Card told him about the attacks.

In that moment, "I became a wartime president," Bush said. "This was a war, and that the job of the president and the country and his team is to rally the nation and to do what's necessary to protect our people."

Bush and Rice recalled that on 9/11, "every plane had become a missile," so there were orders for all planes to land or they could be shot down.

Then-Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, they said, was "trying to land planes on a legal pad" and they worried about whether Flight 93 had been shot down by the US military, though that did not turn out to be the case. The plane crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers tried to wrest control from the hijackers.

Bush said that in the aftermath of the attacks, he "had a sense there was a lot of trauma" but didn't realize "how bad it was 'till I went there."

Bush and Rice also recalled how they had to shift to a "September 12" mentality because "we needed to go on the offense" to prevent another attack.

"People now don't understand the heaviness of the days after 9/11 in trying to protect the country," Rice said.