Most Americans believe that the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina was “at best inept and at worst a reflection of latent racism,” but, in truth, the 2005 disaster epitomized the government’s failure to win the media wars, contends the U.S. Joint Forces Command in a report titled, “Joint Operating Environment 2008.”
JFCOM suggests that, based on the lessons from Katrina, the U.S. military should focus on winning the “battle of narratives” regardless of how events turn out. “At the end of the day, it is the perception of what happened that matters more than what may actually have happened,” says the report. “Dominating the narrative of any operation, whether military or otherwise, pays enormous dividends. Failure to do so undermines support for policies … and can actually damage a country’s reputation.”
The devastation along the Gulf Coast was of historical proportions, but JFCOM still believes that the federal response to Katrina was not as bad as most people believe.
“At the end of the first week after the disaster, 38,000 federal troops were supporting local authorities, fed over a million meals and provided medical care to tens of thousands.” Compare the reaction to Katrina to the reaction to Hurricane Andrew in 1992. “At the end of the first week after Andrew, not a single federal soldier had gone to work. Yet, the federal government’s reaction was graded a success.” Bottom line: The government didn’t botch the response to Katrina, but failed to get credit in the media, the report argues. “The reason for such perceptions lies in the fact that an inept strategic communications operation lost control of the narrative.”