JerryM
Your reasoning is not without logic, in a bizzare kind of way. I can't help but seek analogy: if your neighbor gets robbed and beaten or killed in a bad part of town, would you be making case - and I'm talking about legal case rather than offline comment - that it's his own fault for instigating the assault by showing up there? If this analogy doesn't make sense to you, or seems to be taken out of context, or to be exaggerate, let me explain why it comes to mind.
See, it's all about double standards. Picturing a religious figure of the western world in grotesque way would - and did, including in muslim media - cause no stir; possibly few comments here and there if the cartoon originated in a well recognized source and were completely tasteless. That's what would be expected, that's what would've - and have - happened. Much like you wouldn't expect to be mugged going for a walk in a good neighborhood. Furthermore, you state yourself that the outcome of the Danish experiment was well predictable and that the riots among Muslim community were seen miles away well ahead of time. Agreed here as well, just like with a theoretical unarmed slender guy wearing glasses and business suit in projects who's "just asking for it".
There is, however, a little logical trick that mind might be playing on you. It equalizes, or at the very least brings closer together, concepts of "predictable" and "justified", thus making the whole picture well balanced and thus not requiring outside intervention. Well, they are not equivalent. They are not close. They have no common roots. They belong to completely different plains, and any attempt to even partially rationalize one with another is excersize in futility. A criminal is still a criminal, and "instigation" in both cases is just a convenient occasion to show the true face.
I personally admire Danish cartoonists even more if they realized what exactly they were doing. They sacrificed their own piece of mind, possibly for lifetime, to show the startling differences between the cultures. For many westerners, it took to see these riots to fully realize the magnitude of this "us" against "them" proposition. How did it go? "Islam is a religion of piece, behead those against it", or was it a different wording?
It's just about time to wake up.