Today we will be doing what we do every year for Thanksgiving. My wife’s sister and her husband unfold a big school cafeteria table in their garage and the family gathers for a traditional Thanksgiving meal.

But for more than 2,000 families our war in Iraq has left an empty place at the table and an empty place in the lives of those who loved a fallen soldier. Some of the families use the cause of freedom to paint a purpose on their loss and the whitewash does nothing to heal their wound.

Thousands of families from Louisiana and Mississippi are not celebrating Thanksgiving this year the way they did last year. Katrina has created a new era for them and it’s not a better life. Their President’s bold words of commitment to restoration are beginning to leave a bad taste in their mouths as FEMA assistance is being cut off long before these displaced people are able to find work and housing. They had very little even before the hurricane and now they have less. The homes where they ate turkey last year are now rubble. They will never be confused about whether a Thanksgivings memory was from before or after Katrina.

Maybe I’ll ask my sister-in-law if we can set an empty place down at the end of the table just to serve as a visual reminder of lost lives, lost homes, and lost livelihoods.