9/11: The moment that changed the George W. Bush presidency

Twenty-five years ago today, I was in an elementary school in Florida with President George W. Bush, who was in the middle of a lesson with students when White House chief of staff Andy Card leaned over and whispered in his ear: “America is under attack.”

That terrible truth transformed Bush from a sort of caretaker president — whose biggest initiative had been limiting the use of embryonic stem cells — into a wartime commander in chief.

To that end, he branded Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, “the evildoer.” Not to be outdone, bin Laden declared Bush “the head of international infidels.”

“The sword fell upon America,” bin Laden crowed from a rocky outcrop in Afghanistan as he celebrated the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans. “Its greatest buildings were destroyed. America! Full of fear from its north to south, from its west to its east. Thank God for that.”

But America’s fear quickly morphed into sorrow and then anger. Bush’s first task was to reassure a reeling nation, although it took a few days for him to find his voice.

“We are here in the middle hour of our grief,” Bush told a hushed gathering at the National Cathedral in Washington three days after 9/11. “It is said that adversity introduces us to ourselves. This is true of a nation as well.”

That revealing introduction continued later that day as Bush traveled to Ground Zero in New York City, where he grabbed a bullhorn amid the rubble of the World Trade Center.

“I can hear you!” he hollered to the emergency workers. “And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”

The crowd erupted in chants of “USA! USA!” Bush’s approval rating soon soared to 90 percent, the highest of any president, before or since.

Within two months, U.S.-led forces toppled the core of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Within four years, the first democratically elected Parliament in a generation convened in Kabul.

I was one of the reporters accompanying Vice President Dick Cheney as he witnessed the swearing-in of the Afghani lawmakers. It was an exotic collection of tribal leaders, warlords, refugees and ex-Mujahideen. There were women in dazzling colors and nomadic shepherds in heavy turbans.

Those were heady days for interventionists. By this point, democratization had become one of the central tenets of Bush’s foreign policy. The idea was that Middle Eastern dictatorships could be transformed into democracies — with a little help from Uncle Sam.

“There were certain people who said, ‘How dare you try to promote freedom,’ as if it’s like only available for certain kinda people,” Bush reflected this week. “It’s not America’s gift to the world. I happen to believe it’s the Almighty’s gift to every soul.”

The other tenet of Bush’s foreign policy was the doctrine of preemptive war. The argument was used to justify the ouster of another Middle Eastern dictator, Saddam Hussein, even though Iraq didn’t pose a particularly imminent threat at the time.

Critics in both parties, from President Trump to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), now deride U.S. intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan as “forever wars” of dubious value. But in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Americans overwhelmingly supported military action against Afghanistan, which harbored bin Laden. Failure to retaliate was almost unthinkable.

But even after they were overthrown, Taliban forces never really gave up. Instead, they waged a 20-year insurgency against occupying U.S. troops, finally reclaiming power after America’s botched withdrawal five years ago.

By contrast, Iraq — despite plenty of ongoing challenges — is clearly a better place without Saddam. And yet Americans didn’t support this war as much as they did the one in Afghanistan.

So the legacy of 9/11 is complicated. As the father of a combat Marine who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I have mixed feelings about how things turned out.

Am I pleased that Saddam’s regime is no more? Absolutely. Am I dismayed that the Taliban is back in power? You bet.

But I’m also grateful that U.S. forces finally caught bin Laden after hunting him for a decade. And it still amazes me that for 25 years, we’ve managed to prevent another terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11.

Ironically, Trump came to power in no small part by deriding the “dumb wars” precipitated by 9/11. But in his second term, he has waged a preemptive military strike against Venezuela and launched a protracted war against Iran, urging its citizens to essentially help democratize yet another Middle Eastern dictatorship.

In other words, Bush’s twin doctrines of preemption and democratization may not be so obsolete after all. And while Trump has taken short-term political heat for his military adventures — especially in Iran — who’s to say such moves won’t eventually be viewed as justified?

“The job of historians is to put it all in perspective,” Bush told me nearly a quarter century ago. “We’ll let others make all the judgements [and] piece all the bits of the puzzle together.

“And in order to do it right,” he added, “there’s going to have to be enough time passed to understand.”

Sammon is SVP of editorial content at The Hill and NewsNation’s Washington bureau .