Thousands of Serbs honored a convicted war criminal in Belgrade this week, and the Western press erupted in the kind of moral outrage it never musters for the devastation of American communities back home.

Ratko Mladić — the "Butcher of Bosnia," convicted of genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of roughly 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys — was buried with military honors after dying at 84 in a UN prison in The Hague. His coffin was flown back on a Serbian government plane, carried by soldiers, and draped in the national flag, AP reported. The head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Porfirije, said Mladić's name would remain "deeply etched in the memory and prayers of the majority of our Serbian Orthodox people, who feel and nurture a deep sense of gratitude towards him," according to the BBC. The Russian ambassador attended. Several Serbian government ministers showed up. Soccer fans unveiled a giant image of Mladić and chanted his name.

The EU issued statements. The enlargement commissioner cancelled a planned visit. "Any glorification of war criminals, genocide denial and revisionism contradict the most fundamental European values," the EU declared — a line all three outlets repeated virtually verbatim.

The Mothers of Srebrenica called the funeral "the biggest fascist gathering in Europe in the last 70 years," AP reported. They're right to be furious. Mladić orchestrated mass murder. He got what he deserved in The Hague.

But here's what the coverage won't tell you: selective outrage is a foreign policy tool, and Americans foot the bill. The same press corps that dispatches correspondents to track every development in Balkan reconciliation can't spare a reporter for communities hollowed out by fentanyl, by open borders, by trade policies that shipped their jobs overseas. The Guardian devoted paragraphs to Serbia's stalled EU accession talks. AP noted the EU's warnings about candidate countries. Nobody asked what any of this costs the American taxpayer — or why Washington has spent decades trying to stabilize a corner of Europe that most Americans couldn't find on a map.

Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić, a former ultranationalist who once championed the same expansionist policies Mladić served, called the funeral an "emotional outpouring" with "nothing to do" with government approval, AP reported. That's a dodge — his government sent the plane, provided the soldiers, and staffed the ceremony. The Guardian noted that while it wasn't officially a state funeral, "it mirrored a state event, with large police and military delegations." Vučić even argued last month for Mladić to be released early to die on Serbian soil, The Guardian reported.

The EU's leverage play is obvious: Serbia wants membership, so Brussels threatens the accession process. Fine — that's Europe's business. But when the same institutional press that amplifies EU talking points ignores the slow-motion destruction of American towns and cities, it tells you exactly whose interests they serve.

Mladić was a war criminal. Serbia's glorification of him is a disgrace. But the press doesn't get to claim the moral high ground when it only finds its conscience on foreign soil.