"We Probably Shouldn't Get Too Consumed by the Video Itself"

"The extremist groups who are behind the kind of violence we saw this week will always be able to find some pretext for their actions, and the exact nature of the pretext is no more important than the exact nature of a lightning strike that starts a forest fire. As long as there's enough dry tinder around, you'll get a fire eventually. Likewise, it's the underlying hatred of the United States that provides the real fuel for anti-American violence in the Middle East, and the reason for that hatred is much more about past and present American policies than it is about some shoddily-produced YouTube video. In that sense, getting hung up on the video just distracts us from the real—and much more difficult—issues at hand."

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones comments on this week's violence in the Middle East.

And The Onion adds its perspective.

"More Peaceful, More Stable, and More Just"

"And that's why, two years ago in Cairo, I began to broaden our engagement based upon mutual interests and mutual respect. I believed then-–and I believe now-–that we have a stake not just in the stability of nations, but in the self-determination of individuals. The status quo is not sustainable. Societies held together by fear and repression may offer the illusion of stability for a time, but they are built upon fault lines that will eventually tear asunder.
"So we face a historic opportunity. We have the chance to show that America values the dignity of the street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of the dictator."

The New York Times publishes President Obama's speech on the Middle East.

"Cold-Blooded Realpolitik"

"In the first year of the Obama presidency, conservatives rushed to portray the president as a weak-kneed liberal who would rather appease terrorists than fight. They accused him of abandoning the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies, taking the pressure off Iran, and playing at being president of the world while giving his own country’s interests short shrift. They insisted that his distrust of American power and doubts about American exceptionalism were making the country steadily less safe.
"But this narrative never really fit the facts."

Ross Douthat in The New York Times describes President Obama as "temperamentally conservative" on foreign policy.

"We Have Made You Into Nations and Tribes so That You May Know One Another"

"The issues that I have described will not be easy to address. But we have a responsibility to join together on behalf of the world we seek--a world where extremists no longer threaten our people, and American troops have come home; a world where Israelis and Palestinians are each secure in a state of their own, and nuclear energy is used for peaceful purposes; a world where governments serve their citizens, and the rights of all God's children are respected. Those are mutual interests. That is the world we seek. But we can only achieve it together."

Salon prints President Obama's speech in Cairo.