Outrage (n.) that fires at an enemy's minor incursion and stays silent at an ally's bombing raids is not principle but fraud.
Outrage (n.) over terrorism is visceral only for worthy victims, by a criterion all too obvious.
Outrage (n.) arrives in retrospect, once responsibility is safely far away; the time to expose suffering is while we are paying for it.
Outrage (n.) in the West tracks the ratio of the dead: at twenty to one it was absent, at three to one it was extreme — once the victims were our clients.
Outrage (n.) is rationed by usefulness: the Soviet downing of a Korean airliner served a purpose; Israel's downing of a Libyan one, the Times said, served 'no useful purpose' to debate.
Outrage (n.) over an enemy's atrocities can serve to justify one's own past crimes: the horrors of the Khmer Rouge redeemed the Indochina war after the fact.
Outrage (n.) can be tested by one question: does it show up equally when the victims are the other side's?
Outrage (n.) is rationed by perpetrator: the same crime that dwarfs everything when committed by a rival goes nearly unmentioned when it is our own.
Outrage (n.) passes a symmetry test only if it would follow the same report in the rival's newspaper; its absence here shows only the habit of the culture.
Outrage (n.) rises as blame can be put on enemies, and falls as our own responsibility, and our power to end the crime, grows.