ByARIELLA ROITMANSEPTEMBER 11, 2026 21:50Updated: SEPTEMBER 11, 2026 21:56Americans are not paying attention to the lesson of 9/11, Former President George W. Bush said as America marks 25 years since the September 11 terrorist attacks, a CBS report revealed on Thursday."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."Bush was nearly eight months into his first term as president when 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four airplanes and flew two of them into the Twin Towers of New York City’s World Trade Center.The former president spoke about the anniversary of the attacks with former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice at his presidential library in Dallas, according to the report. Rice served as national security adviser at the time of the attacks and then went on to become secretary of state.'It's a belief that everyone wants to be free,' Bush saysAs people are "struggling against tyranny, it makes sense" for the US to get involved, Bush said. "We don't have to send troops. 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." Former US President George W. Bush and former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have a conversation as the George W. Bush Presidential Center commemorates the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, in Dallas, Texas, US, September 9, 2026. (credit: REUTERS/Jeremy Lock)Bush launched a war in Afghanistan in what would become a 20-year conflict and America’s longest war.The former president intended to support the development of a democratic government in the country after years of Taliban rule, but following US withdrawal, the Islamic terrorist organization regained control in 2021.Bush, according to CBS, said he disagrees with the view of some Americans who say people there "don't know the difference" between what it is like to live under freedom and what it is like to live without freedom."Of course they know the difference," Bush said. "Young girls going to school for the first time in their lives know the difference. Women becoming doctors and professors know the difference between a free society and a tyrannical society. And sadly, these women who begin to realize their full potential no longer have a chance to realize their full potential."Bush recalled that he was visiting an elementary school when the 9/11 attacks were launched. His then-chief of staff, Andy Card, informed him about the situation, CBS said.Bush recalls becoming a wartime president"I became a wartime president" in that moment, CBS cited Bush as saying. "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 "every plane had become a missile” that day. There were orders for all planes to land or they could be shot down, according to the report.They recalled that then-transportation secretary Norman Mineta was "trying to land planes on a legal pad" and they worried about whether Flight 93 had been shot down by the US military, according to CBS.However, 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."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," CBS cited Rice as saying. "And that always to me represented just how hard the decisions that you had to take under a lot of pressure."Bush said that he "had a sense there was a lot of trauma" in the aftermath of the attacks, but had not realized "how bad it was 'till I went there."The former president gave a speech three days later at Ground Zero, the site of the Twin Towers, amid wreckage and alongside first responders.He reflected on Wednesday that at that time, his highest priority was helping the country return to normal, said CBS."I didn't want us to lose our soul," Bush recalled. "I wanted, as we defended our freedoms, I wanted people to remember how precious they are."He also said that he visited a mosque shortly after the attacks because he was “deeply concerned about stories of women of color being harassed at shopping centers, particularly in Michigan,” according to the report."It became clear to me that this is an ideological struggle, which is what I viewed it as, and we forego one of the most important parts of our ideology, which is the freedom to worship the way you want to worship," he said. "All of a sudden, the enemy has won a victory, and so that was part of my thinking."Bush and Rice said that they needed 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.Follow us on Google