Moral blindness

NZPundit just doesn't understand people's outrage about the US's torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib:

What am I missing here people? I see the tragic symbolism of what happened in Abu Ghraib but really don't see how it is that important past the hysteria of the current news cycle.

Curiously, he has no such trouble understanding people's outrage about Saddam's torture, which shows us where the trouble lies. And as usual with NZPundit, it's a problem of consistency. What he is clearly missing is any sense that torture is wrong regardless of who does it. His analysis is concerned solely with what people will think, and how it will cause them to act towards the US. He seems completely blind to the moral dimension, to the idea that if it is wrong for Saddam to torture, it is also wrong for the United States, and everyone else as well.

But it's not just the outrage of torture itself, it's the outrage of torture committed by people who know better. The United States is supposed to be the "beacon of freedom", the exemplar of human rights for the world. And yet, it stoops to this. And so we have shattered expectations, disgust at backsliding, abhorrence at the betrayal of the values we hold dear, and a hefty dose of fear - because if the US can backslide, how safe are the rest of us?