Let's start WWIII on account of some cartoons, why don't we.

I'll tell you what offends me: religion offends me. Religious zealots from the dark ages offend me. I'm an equal opportunity fundamentalist loather, I don't care what religion a zealot belongs to, for they are all the same: narrowminded, primitive, bigoted and stupid. A pox on all of them!
The secular majority of people in the world are very wrong about their laissez faire, what-ever, attitude towards religious intolerance. We should be fighting tooth and nail against it, but nobody gives a damn because they are too busy watching American Idol. Well, we are well on our way back to the darkest ages of persecution and massive mental retardation, so we are reaping what we've sown. Happy now?
Now, is it any wonder that this cartoon debacle happened in Europe? No, because they are a bunch of racists even as they scream like banshees about their love for democracy. These are societies that were racially homogeneous for very long (they were happy to kick Jews around and enslave darker people in other continents) and who have not allowed their immigrants to assimilate or even adapt to their beloved democracies. They raped, plundered, humiliated and brought disease, chaos and destruction to Africa and Asia in colonial times and now they're crying. They are still as arrogant and clueless as before, and as unrepentant of the disasters they unleashed upon the world, but now they're shitting in their pants about their new boarders.
I loathe political correctness probably as much as I loathe fundamentalism, but I will say this in its defense: it trains people to be sensitive to others. This means that you can still be a prejudiced, bigoted racist, and you can have ignorant ideas about certain kinds of people or groups in the privacy of your own brain, without being stupid enough to advertise them to the entire world. We may still be a land of prejudice and increasing inequality, but we score way better than Europe in that respect (Elton John's wedding notwithstanding).
As for the cartoons... if you want to check out what the fuss is about, they are not easy to find. Is the decision not to publish them on national and international newssites based on respect or on fear? I bet that option b plays a big role.

I leave you with a Randy Newman song:

The great nations of Europe had gathered on the shore
They'd conquered what was behind them and now they wanted more
So they looked to the mighty ocean and took to the western sea
The great nations of Europe in the sixteenth century

Hide your wives and daughters
Hide the groceries too
The great nations of Europe coming through!

The Grand Canary Islands, first land to which they came,
They slaughtered all the canaries which gave the land its name
There were natives there called Guanches, Guanches by the score,
Bullets, disease, the Portuguese, and they weren't there anymore.

Now they're gone, they're gone, they're really gone,
You've never seen anyone so gone
They're a picture in a museum, some lines within a book,
But you won't find a live one, no matter where you look.

Hide your wives and daughters
Hide the groceries too
The great nations of Europe coming through!

Columbus sailed for India, found Salvador instead,
He shook hands with some Indians and soon they all were dead
They got TB and typhoid and athlete's foot, diphteria and the flu,
'Scuse me, Great Nations coming through!

Balboa found the Pacific, and on the trail one day
He met some friendly Indians whom he was told were gay
So he had them torn apart by dogs on religious grounds they say
The great nations of Europe were quite holy in their way

Now they're gone, they're gone, they're really gone,
You've never seen anyone so gone
Some bones hidden in a canyon, some paintings in a cave,
There's no use trying to save them, there's nothing left to save.

Hide your wives and daughters
Hide your sons as well
With the great nations of Europe you never can tell.

From where you and I are standing at the end of the century
Europes have sprung up everywhere as far as the eye can see
But there on the horizon as a possibility
Some bug from out of Africa might come for you and me
Destroying everything in its path from sea to shining sea
Like the great nations of Europe in the Sixteenth Century.