NEW ORLEANS is battered and submerged today. But it will rise again because it is — and always has been — the single most important cog in the nation's economy.
Hurricane Katrina left the port pretty much intact, and the river seems navigable. But you can't have a port without people, and the commercial facilities will be needed in two weeks, when Midwest farmers begin harvesting. Their harvest will be handled this year and, if civilian workers cannot be found, the Army units cleaning up the storm damage could be expected to stay and work the ports.
But in the long run, the economic health of the nation depends on developing a port city about where New Orleans sits — a port surrounded by workers and better protected from nature. That city will be called New Orleans. It will be rebuilt for the same reason it was built in a malarial swamp in the first place: because it is where a city must be built.
