Securitizing the Unconscious: The Bush Doctrine of Preemption and Minority Report

Abstract

On June 1, 2002, President George W. Bush articulated his administration’s primary justification for Gulf War II, what become known as the Bush Doctrine of Preemption. This doctrine holds that it is politically, legally, and morally defensible for the United States to use force against a perceived foreign foe in order to prevent future harm against itself, even though that perceived foreign foe has not yet attacked the United States. In his speech to graduating West Point cadets, Bush claimed that “our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives.”¹ Later that month, the forward-looking film Minority Report was released in U.S. cinemas. Based on Philip K. Dick’s short story of the same name, Minority Report is a futuristic tale that critically explores a U.S. domestically applied system of preemptive justice through the fictitious Department of PreCrime.² Not surprisingly, the film was read by critics as an eerie allegory of the Bush Doctrine of Preemption, even though the film’s director Steven Spielberg publicly declared his support for the president’s policies in the so-called “war on terror.”³