Why all the uproar over AIG bonuses?

It's simple.

The over-the-top "outrage" deflects criticism away from where it REALLY belongs: the political class that enabled this mess in the first place.

Noteworthy:

"Given that the government has never defined 'systemic risk,' we're also starting to wonder exactly which system American taxpayers are paying to protect. It's not capitalism, in which risk-takers suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And in some cases it's not even American. The U.S. government is now in the business of distributing foreign aid to offshore financiers, laundered through a once-great American company.

The politicians also prefer to talk about AIG's latest bonus payments because they deflect attention from Washington's failure to supervise AIG. The Beltway crowd has been selling the story that AIG failed because it operated in a shadowy unregulated world and cleverly exploited gaps among Washington overseers. Said President Obama yesterday, 'This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed.' That's true, but Washington doesn't want you to know that various arms of government approved, enabled and encouraged AIG's disastrous bet on the U.S. housing market.

Scott Polakoff, acting director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, told the Senate Banking Committee this month that, contrary to media myth, AIG's infamous Financial Products unit did not slip through the regulatory cracks. Mr. Polakoff said that the whole of AIG, including this unit, was regulated by his agency and by a 'college' of global bureaucrats."

....and:

"The Washington crowd wants to focus on bonuses because it aims public anger on private actors, not the political class. But our politicians and regulators should direct some of their anger back on themselves -- for kicking off AIG's demise by ousting Mr. Greenberg, for failing to supervise its bets, and then for blowing a mountain of taxpayer cash on their AIG nationalization.

Whether or not these funds ever come back to the Treasury, regulators should now focus on getting AIG back into private hands as soon as possible. And if Treasury and the Fed want to continue bailing out foreign banks, let them make that case, honestly and directly, to American taxpayers."

Rich Lowry has more.

I'm no fan of AIG. I know what their kind of corporate-think produces. But in this case, let's direct our attention to where it belongs, and not on the contracted bonus obligations that has caused all the noise in the media and blahgosphere.