George W. Bush used a rare public appearance on Wednesday to say Americans “don’t pay attention to the lesson of 9/11,” casting the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as a warning, not a memorial. Speaking at his presidential library in Dallas with Condoleezza Rice beside him, Bush said the attacks changed the way he saw the presidency and the country’s place in the world.
The reason the remarks landed now was the anniversary itself. Twenty-five years after Sept. 11, 2001, Bush was not speaking in generalities; he was reopening the argument he made after the attacks, that events overseas can reach directly into American life and security at home. Rice, who was national security adviser on Sept. 11 and later became secretary of state, recalled one of the most terrifying moments of that day. For about 10 minutes, she said, those around her thought a civilian aircraft had been shot down.
Bush said he had been visiting an elementary school on Sept. 11, 2001, when Andy Card told him about the attacks, and that in that moment he understood he had become a wartime president. He and Rice described a day in which every plane felt like a missile, with orders for all aircraft to land or be shot down, and with Norman Mineta trying to keep track of what was happening on a legal pad. They also worried that Flight 93 might have been downed by the United States military before it crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers tried to wrest control from the hijackers.
The deeper point of Bush’s remarks was not only memory but doctrine. He said the United States should at least stand with people struggling against tyranny, and argued that young girls going to school for the first time, or women becoming doctors and professors, know the difference between a free society and a tyrannical one. He said he launched the war in Afghanistan after the attacks and backed the development of a democratic government after years of humanitarian abuses by the Taliban.
That argument is harder to leave untouched now than it was then. The war in Afghanistan lasted 20 years and became America’s longest war, and after the United States withdrew in 2021, Afghanistan came under Taliban rule again. Bush did not spell out a new policy prescription, but his comments amounted to a reminder that the impulse to turn inward has costs, and that the country’s largest post-9/11 gamble ended with the old regime back in power. He said at Ground Zero on Sept. 14, 2001, he felt there was a great deal of trauma there, and that he did not fully grasp how bad it was until he saw it for himself.
What Bush chose to say on the anniversary was less a retrospective than a rebuke. He was arguing that the lesson of 9/11 still points outward, even after 25 years, and that the question he leaves behind is whether Americans are prepared to carry that lesson any farther than memory.
