George W. Bush marked 25 years since September 11 by defending one of his most debated statements.
Appearing at his presidential center alongside former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Bush revisited the phrase he used in the days after the 2001 attacks. “I also made it clear that Islam was a religion of peace, not a religion of war, and that these people subverted their religion,” he said at the event commemorating the anniversary.
The statement was not new. Bush made the same argument in the weeks following September 11, and he has defended it repeatedly since. But standing beside Rice, 25 years later, he chose to frame it as one of the defining and correct decisions of his presidency.
Special offer for our readers:
8 Top Credit Cards Offering Introductory No Interest into 2027
As originally reported, Bush was deliberate about the distinction he drew after the attacks, arguing that the 19 hijackers had not represented their faith but had distorted it.
The argument carried real weight at the time. It shaped the entire framework through which the U.S. government understood the threat it was facing. If the attackers were a small, aberrant group who had twisted their own religion, the problem was narrow and manageable. That logic drove decisions about how to fight, where to fight, and what a successful outcome might look like.
Critics have long argued the assumption was too simple. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq stretched for two decades. The U.S. spent trillions of dollars and lost thousands of American service members. When American forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, Kabul fell to the Taliban in 11 days. The Afghan army the U.S. had spent 20 years training largely dissolved before the final evacuation flights departed.
Bush did not address those outcomes directly at the anniversary event. His focus, alongside Rice, was on the rhetorical choices he made in the immediate aftermath of the attacks and why he believed they were right.
The 9/11 anniversary brought renewed attention to how the attacks reshaped American foreign policy and domestic life. Bush, who was president for nearly eight years after that morning, remains one of the most debated figures in that history. His decision to publicly separate Islam from the violence of September 11 was among the first major choices he made, and he is still defending it a quarter century later.
Rice, who served as National Security Advisor during the attacks and later as Secretary of State, was present at the event but the remarks attributed to Bush were his own. The two have remained closely associated with the policy decisions of that era.
Twenty-five years on, Bush’s framing of September 11 continues to draw both defenders and sharp critics, and he shows no sign of walking it back.
