Indignation over unearned bonuses feels good, doesn't it? It suggests that our capacity for moral judgment is very much alive, especially when tied to the fluctuations of the market.

For many Americans, the growing populist rage over the $165 million in bonuses paid to executives at the American International Group offers yet another guilt-free opportunity for turning in a performance worthy of the Howard Beale character in "Network" -- or CNBC's Rick Santelli, ranting on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade last month.

It helps that the villains are clearly delineated. Despite being saved from insolvency by more than $170 billion in American tax dollars, AIG has paid out $165 million in bonuses to executives in the most toxic unit of the sprawling firm.

The senior executives at the incompetently run insurance giant "understand" the public's anger. Still, they insist that their hands are tied: The bonuses are part of a longstanding contract with the employees. Paying these bonuses, I suppose, is the only way to retain the high-caliber executive talent it takes to endanger the global economy while bringing the company to its knees.

What? You have a problem with the $440 billion in credit default swaps and other toxic derivatives that were already on the books before we taxpayers virtually took over the company? Shame on you. The free market has never been about risk to those who know how to manipulate it.

Just because we're contractually obligated to write the checks doesn't mean we have a right to know which AIG employees will be receiving bonuses ranging from $1,000 to $6.5 million. How is that any of our business?

To know who the bonuses will be going to would violate the privacy of recipients who "deserve" to be rewarded for having destroyed faith in capitalism for at least a generation.

As majority stake holders in a failed company called AIG, we taxpayers have to accept that we don't actually run anything. If we did, those remotely connected to the company's failures in the last 16 months would be shown the door. There would be little interest in "retaining" such disastrous talent.

"This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed," President Barack Obama said yesterday, stating the obvious. He briefly departed from the script that dictates that he remain cool and unflappable whatever the provocation. "I mean, how do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?"

The president flashed a couple of angry (for him) facial expressions, but undermined the effect by coughing and joking: "I'm choked up with anger here."

As the president demonstrated, outrage is easy even for the coolest of cats when billions are on the line.

Fresh from confessing to rigging the biggest Ponzi scheme in Wall Street history, Bernie Madoff is probably also pacing his prison cell right now, cursing the AIG deal as a betrayal of the taxpayers' trust.

Why would Mr. Madoff want to see derivative traders at AIG rewarded for running sophisticated versions of the same con he ran for two decades? Even a ruthless criminal has a vested interest in everyone else being honest.

So, by all means -- get mad, America, but spread some of that indignation around. There's treasure -- like the tens of millions that scoundrels at AIG will pocket. But there's also blood and treasure represented by the ongoing debacle in Iraq.

Friday is the sixth anniversary of the beginning of a war that American taxpayers should, frankly, be angrier about. Besides the tragic loss of life and the erosion of our international prestige, the Iraq war is costing the American economy trillions.

But the war has fallen off the front pages of our financially troubled newspapers. Even though it constitutes one of the biggest sinkholes of our economy, one has to hunt for news about it in every edition. Is Iraq only worthy of coverage when American soldiers are killed or a journalist is sentenced for throwing shoes at a visiting president? That's what it feels like.

We broke Iraq. As taxpayers, we don't want to think about the fact that we own its shattered economy. We should take more interest in our investment. We'll be pouring billions into it long after the last American soldier has departed.

What would happen if American taxpayers were just as upset about the sixth anniversary of a war that costs us billions of dollars a week as we are about bonuses we're paying to failed executives at AIG? Can we sustain moral indignation about something other than money?

There's nothing wrong with moral outrage. I simply wish our outrage weren't so damn selective.