Efforts to aid and rebuild Haiti are being impeded by a lack of infrastructure and a non-functioning government. This crisis provides an opportunity to create a model for how the international community can enable poor communities to survive natural disasters.

There are lessons in Haiti's collapse that seem starkly relevant to the "larger" foreign-policy issues of our day, particularly postwar Iraq and Afghanistan. These lessons should reduce partisan finger-pointing and remind us that the secret to success in U.S. overseas interventions is mustering the will to stay until the job is done right.