More on the guano-storm over the Danish cartoons:

• The Vatican managed to have it both ways:
  

  In its first official comments on the caricatures, the Vatican, while deploring violent protests, said certain forms of criticism represent an “unacceptable provocation.”

  “The right to freedom of thought and expression … cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers,” the Vatican said in a statement.

• Hugh Hewitt wonders WWCD — What Would Churchill Do? — and ends up thinking that though the Western world should come to the rescue on the basis on freedom of speech and countering Muslim bullies, the cartoonists acted irresponsibly:
  

  There is a chasm of difference between serious commentary on the Islamic challenge facing Europe and the West … and crude, sweeping anti-Muslim propaganda. It isn’t necessary to defend the latter in order to uphold and praise the former.

• via Hugh Hewitt: this blogger thinks that the Syrian response at least is just a case of the government creating a smokescreen:
  

  Thousands enraged, huh? More likely scenario: the dictatorship is using The Cartoon War as a convenient issue to deflect the anti-regime heat building inside Syria and shift media focus from the murder investigation.

• via InstaPundit — an Iraqi blogger weighs in:
  

  Anyway, since when did stupid, tasteless cartoons start stirring such passions among the Muslims? Arabic language newspapers and magazines regularly run cartoons that offend all sorts of communities. It would be easier to respect all this rage if these angry people applied the same standards all around.

  You know, in 2002, 15 Saudi schoolgirls burned to death when Saudi religious police wouldn’t let them escape their building because they were not in hijab.

  Waiting for my fellow Muslims to react to that kind of criminality with the same impassioned outrage they save for offensive newspaper cartoons has been rather like waiting for a desert-blown Godot. Our community leaders, as always, fail us.

  (For a sampling of the type of cartoons the blogger describes, go here.

• Little Green Footballs on the double-standard I went off on yesterday:
  

  CNN has been accompanying every story about the cartoon jihad with the boilerplate message: CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons out of respect for Islam.

  But they apparently have no such “respect” for Christianity; they didn’t hesitate for a second to show this image of the virgin Mary made out of elephant dung …

• I said yesterday that I thought Europe would assume a submissive attitude in the face of the protests. They did, but the US State Department was right there alongside, cranking up their Captain Sensitivity suits:
  

  “These cartoons are indeed offensive to the belief of Muslims,” State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper said in answer to a question. “We all fully recognize and respect freedom of the press and expression but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable.”

  “We call for tolerance and respect for all communities for their religious beliefs and practices,” he added.

  Oh give me a break. When has the State Department given a rip about giving due respect to Jewish, Buddhist, Christian, Zorastrian or any other religion’s beliefs and practices, let alone telling the press to be responsible? Will someone give these guys real jobs to do? And will someone tell Reuters that since the State Dept. is out on its own island, the headline “US sides with Muslims …” is erroneous?
  The story ends with an embarrassing comparison:

  Major U.S. publications have not republished the cartoons, which include depictions of Mohammad as a terrorist. That is in contrast to European media, which responded to the criticism against the original Danish newspaper that printed the caricatures by republishing the offensive images themselves.

  I don’t know. I agree with Hewitt that we should pick our battles, and to cause violent repercussions in undefended areas of the world may just be stupid. But when it comes to this “We’re offended and crazy and if we see those cartoons we’re going to make you pay,” line that is being drawn in the sand, you only have two ways to go: (1) Make sure that they never see the cartoons anywhere and hope that they’ll get bored and go home for some hummus or (2) Put the cartoons everywhere and call their bluff. The Europeans went with the latter strategem and for “major U.S. publications” to go with the former, I think they not only look weak by comparison, but leave the European press twisting in the wind.