September 7, 2005 - The polluted flood waters are commencing to drain from the streets of New Orleans. Lake Pontchartrain is receiving the septic effluent left behind by Katrina. One by one they are recovering bodies. Some from the debris some revealed as the waters leave what were their homes. We don’t know how many. We may never know how many. One by one the dead are identified, some promptly. Others so badly decomposed as to conceal their identities will take longer. Some will remain New Orleans unknown soldiers through eternity. “No pictures of the dead”, is the FEMA order. The dead are to be treated with dignity and respect just as those coming home from the war. No photographers or reporters will accompany the recovery teams. It will not do to have such graphic reminders of the cost of ineptitude published in the nation’s news media – neither from Iraq nor from New Orleans.

The waters recede and with the passage of time so too will the Gulf Coast victims of incompetence recede from our consciousness. Football season is here and running backs will replace the dead and dying on our TV screens and newspaper pages. Soon the Superbowl will again be remembered for the great games played there rather than the dispossessed who hunkered down and died there. Just as Katrina pushed the insurgent offensive in Iraq off the front pages and the evening news so too will Katrina retreat in the face of other news. Few will remember that the Gulf Coast dead outnumbered the American toll from 911 and four years of war combined.

The meteoric rise of John Roberts to the Chief Justice seat and Alberto Gonzales taking Justice O’Connor’s seat will claim our political attention yet again. We will remember Katrina only when Congress debates the cost or when yet another commission studies and studies and declares that everyone is to blame for the fiasco that followed Katrina into the Gulf States.

The myths are already being woven. There was no looting in Halley Barbour’s Mississippi goes the right wing chant. The fact is that the looters were active in Gulfport and Biloxi. The thin veneer of civilization was stripped as bare in Mississippi as it was in Louisiana.

Time will pass and the pictures of thousands lined up on cots will be forgotten. One news account refereed to them as “displaced persons”. That was a phrase from memory as America opened its doors to the disposed of Europe’s decade of war. We called them “DPs” and their welcome was grudging. They spoke strange languages and sat in our elementary classrooms and we understood that they were not quite as valuable as you and me. Those DPs who made it to America did not want to return to their former homes and we were called upon to absorb them.

Is Houston ready to absorb the displaced persons crowded into the Astrodome? Is Baton Rouge ready to cope with the doubling of its population? Is a faltering economy that has seen the number of Americans living in poverty rise for each of the past five years ready to provide work, shelter and dignity to Katrina’s displaced persons? That is why we must not forget what we have seen in the last 10 days.