Although the MTV Video Music Awards took control of Twitter feeds everywhere Sunday night, another topic was making an impression on social media sites as well — President George W. Bush’s most in-depth on-camera interview yet on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Bush looked back on the events that would shape the start of his presidency in an exclusive interview with National Geographic that aired Sunday.
“This is what war is like in the 21st century,” Bush said in the interview, which aired as an opener to National Geographic’s Remembering 9/11 week.
It will include programs focusing on the attacks, the terrorists involved and our war against them leading up to the event’s tenth anniversary.
Bush described not only his transformation as a person but also the transformation of war that occurred as a result of the attacks.
“It became apparent we were facing a new kind of enemy,” he told National Geographic.
Bush said as each consecutive plane hit its target, the president’s attitude shifted dramatically.
“I thought the first was an accident, the second was an attack and the third was a declaration of war,” he said.
Footage of President Bush during his visit to an elementary school that morning depicted his aghast, then forcibly reserved, reaction to the news.
“My first reaction was anger,” he said. But in that classroom, he added, surrounded by children, “I wanted to project a sense of calm.”
After stopping at two separate Air Force bases, Bush eventually made the decision to return to Washington “over the objections of about everybody else,” he explained.
“I damn sure wasn’t about to give [the statement] from a bunker in Nebraska,” he said in the interview.
Being forced to address the grieving nation away from the Capitol, he said, would have granted the attackers a psychological victory.
As he visited the Pentagon and Ground Zero over the next few days, Bush said he was “determined to send a message that the United States would be relentless in our pursuit of justice.”
While shaking hands with the “bloodshot” workers who had yet to leave Ground Zero, Bush said the atmosphere hosted a “palpable bloodlust.”
And when he stood above the crowd that day, megaphone thrusted into his hands, Bush knew a statement had to be made on the behalf of the people before him and those whose lives fell with the towers.
“I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon,” he promised the exhausted workers below.
As the hour-long interview drew to a close, Bush noted the gratefulness he felt when President Barack Obama called to inform him of Osama bin Laden’s death less than five months ago.
“I felt a sense of closure,” Bush said.