Much of the civilian population of Yemen is being starved to death. As I have said many times before, the Saudi-led blockade is primarily responsible for cutting Yemen off from its food supply. These are some of the consequences:

A boy lies on a hospital bed in Yemen’s port city of Al-Hudaydah. His eyes are full of life, but his skinny body tells another story: His arm is so thin that he can wrap his lips around it. His ribs stick out under his skin. He is one of 1.5 million children in Yemen who are suffering from malnutrition [bold mine-DL].

The scale and severity of Yemen’s humanitarian crisis are staggering, and both will only continue to worsen unless the situation changes dramatically and very soon. Not only are the lives of millions of people at risk of being lost right now, but the future development and health of an entire generation are being destroyed as well. Even if the immediate crisis is addressed with an end to the blockade and a massive infusion of aid, Yemen will be living with the destructive effects of this intervention for decades. If the international response remains as limited and halting as it has been, Yemen will suffer massive loss of life from a man-made famine that need never have happened and could have been prevented. This is what the Saudis and their allies have wrought with our government’s help.

Yemen’s ongoing starvation by the Saudi-led blockade is horrifying, but what makes it even worse is that the humanitarian crisis created by the intervention was entirely foreseeable and many warned about it when the Saudi-led war began. The disaster consuming Yemen was entirely to be expected, and it didn’t have to happen, but the Saudis and their allies went ahead and made it happen. U.S. backing for this appalling war is by far the worst thing Obama has done overseas as president, and it stands out as one of the most shameful episodes of modern U.S. foreign policy.