More on the cartoon affair

Guardian Unlimited | World dispatch | Drawn conclusions

The above commentary piece in the Guardian is pretty good.

Janet Albrechtsen on the same issue in the Australian today is strangely silent on the American response to the issue. She criticises European and Australian papers for not publishing the cartoons in a show of support for free speech, but I believe that the US media (except for the internet) has not gone out of it ways to publish them either.

(But then again, the US having a muted response is understandable in light of how publicity would likely lead to an increased risk to American defence force personnel already having a hard enough time in Iraq and Afghanistan. I would say that this is clearly behind the government's very conciliatory statement that sounded too soft.)

Anyway, I guess there is not much more to be said on this issue, and I will try not to post about it for some time.