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The U.S.-backed, Saudi-led war and naval blockade in Yemen has sparked a cholera epidemic that has become the largest and fastest-spreading outbreak of the disease in modern world history. There are expected to be a million cases of cholera in Yemen by the end of the year, with at least 600,000 children likely to be affected. The U.S. has been a major backer of the Saudi-led war. But in Washington, opposition to the U.S. support for the Saudi-led war is growing. Lawmakers recently introduced a constitutional resolution to withdraw all U.S. support for the war.

If there's been a single, clear, consistent foreign policy message that's emerged from the last decade of U.S. elections, it's simple: Voters are exhausted of open-ended, expensive, destructive, and unaccountable foreign wars. From President Bush's "thumping" in the 2006 midterms to the resonance of retrenchment rhetoric from leaders ranging from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to President Trump, it's evident that Americans across the political spectrum want the federal government to exercise more prudence and humility when it comes to foreign conflicts.

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Imagine that the entire population of Washington State — 7.3 million people — were on the brink of starvation, with the port city of Seattle under a naval and aerial blockade, leaving it unable to receive and distribute countless tons of food and aid that sit waiting offshore. This nightmare scenario is akin to the obscene reality occurring in the Middle East's poorest country, Yemen, at the hands of the region's richest, Saudi Arabia, with unyielding United States military support that Congress has not authorized and that therefore violates the Constitution.

The ongoing civil war in Yemen was instigated by the region's major powers, with Iran on one side and a Saudi Arabia-led coalition of Persian Gulf states on the other. The fighting — especially airstrikes by Saudi and United Arab Emirates pilots — has devastated Yemen, one of the Arab world's poorest nations. It has created what three U.N. agencies call "the world's largest humanitarian crisis": Sixty percent of the Yemeni population is "food insecure"; 700,000 have been infected with cholera, a deadly disease spread by a lack of clean water and sanitation.

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is widely considered the federal government's most effective anti-poverty program. Sending tax refund checks to millions of low-income Americans every year, it helps people keep more of what they earn, and helps people stay working (and not claiming other benefits). In the 2015 tax year, more than 26 million families and individuals received the EITC, with an average payout of about $3,000 (the maximum amount available is about $5,500). Unusually, the EITC also has broad bipartisan support.

Since March 2015, millions of people inside the country of Yemen have languished on the edge of social collapse due to brutal and inhumane conflict that has resulted in at least 10,000 deaths — many of them civilians.

On top of the violence of the conflict itself, Yemenis face desolation in their everyday lives, economic decay and the fastest spreading cholera epidemic ever recorded. The nation, and its people, lie at a tipping point between mere emergent crisis and something far worse.