Former US president George W. Bush has warned that Americans risk ignoring the lessons of the September 11 attacks, arguing that events overseas continue to have a direct bearing on national security at home.
Speaking in Dallas alongside Condoleezza Rice, his national security adviser on 11 September 2001, Mr Bush said the United States must not retreat into isolationism as people around the world struggle against tyranny.
“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?’” he said.
“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.”
The remarks came during a special event at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas to mark the 25th anniversary of the attacks, which killed almost 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
Mr Bush, now 80, said the US did not necessarily need to send troops when people were fighting oppression, but should at least offer its support.
“We don’t have to send troops,” he said. “We ought to at least stand with them and stand beside them because this is what we went through 250 years ago.”
He pointed to Afghanistan, where the US launched a war after the attacks and later supported the creation of a democratic government. The conflict lasted 20 years before American forces withdrew in 2021 and the Taliban returned to power.
George W. Bush recalls the days after 9/11
Mr Bush rejected the suggestion that people in Afghanistan could not understand the value of freedom, particularly after women and girls gained access to schools, universities and professions during the years of international involvement.
“Young girls going to school for the first time in their lives know the difference,” he said. “Women becoming doctors and professors know the difference between a free society and a tyrannical society.”
He added that many of those women had since lost the chance to fulfil their potential under Taliban rule.
Mr Bush also recalled the moment he was informed of the attacks while visiting Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. His then-chief of staff, Andy Card, leaned over and told him that a second aircraft had struck the World Trade Centre.
“In that moment, I became a wartime president,” Mr 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.”
Ms Rice described the confusion inside the White House, saying that every aircraft had suddenly become a potential missile. Orders were issued for all planes to land, while officials tried to establish what had happened to United Airlines Flight 93.
The aircraft crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers attempted to seize control from the hijackers. For a period, officials feared it might have been shot down by the US military.
“There was this horrible moment where the vice-president kept trying to get confirmation as to what had happened, and for about 10 minutes, we thought we’d shot down a civilian aircraft,” Ms Rice said.
She said the episode showed the difficulty of making life-and-death decisions under extreme pressure.
Ms Rice also recalled how the intelligence picture changed almost overnight. She said a threat matrix that had been relatively small on 10 September had become “like a phonebook” by 12 September, as the FBI and CIA began working more closely together.
Mr Bush said he had understood that the attacks had caused widespread trauma but had not grasped its scale until he visited New York three days later. At Ground Zero, he addressed firefighters, police officers and other first responders amid the ruins of the World Trade Centre.
“I didn’t want us to lose our soul,” he said. “I wanted, as we defended our freedoms, I wanted people to remember how precious they are.”
He also recalled visiting a mosque shortly after the attacks after hearing reports of Muslim and other women of colour being harassed in shopping centres.
Mr Bush said the US would have betrayed its own principles if it had responded to the attacks by restricting freedom of worship.
The former president and former first lady Laura Bush are due to attend a 25th-anniversary commemoration at Ground Zero in New York on Friday, 11 September. The Bush Center has also scheduled a moment of remembrance and is displaying 16 paintings created by Mr Bush for the anniversary.
