George W. Bush said Americans “don't pay attention to the lesson of 9/11” during rare remarks on Wednesday at his presidential library in Dallas. He spoke with Condoleezza Rice as the country marked 25 years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Bush said the country has gone through isolationist periods and argued that “what happens overseas matters to our national security at home.” He also said the United States should at least stand with people struggling against tyranny.
Dallas remarks with Rice
Rice, who was national security adviser during the attacks and later became secretary of state, joined Bush as he revisited the response to 9/11. He said the United States saw in Afghanistan the belief that everybody wants to be free, and he said young girls going to school for the first time and women becoming doctors and professors know the difference between a free society and a tyrannical society.
Bush also said, “We don't have to send troops,” while arguing that the country still ought to stand beside people confronting tyranny. The comments tied his warning to a broader view of U.S. security that extends beyond the country's borders.
Sept. 11, 2001 memories
He recalled being at an elementary school on Sept. 11, 2001, when Andy Card told him about the attacks. Bush said, “I became a wartime president,” and later reflected that there was a lot of trauma in the aftermath.
Bush and Rice also revisited the air-response confusion that day. They said every plane had become a missile, that planes were ordered to land or could be shot down, and that Norman Mineta was trying to land planes on a legal pad. Rice said that for about 10 minutes they thought they had shot down a civilian aircraft.
Flight 93 crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers tried to wrest control from the hijackers. Bush visited Ground Zero and gave a speech there on Sept. 14, 2001, three days after the attacks. His remarks in Dallas returned to that sequence of decisions and fear, and to the view he said still shapes how the United States should read threats overseas.
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