“I recommend your reading Decision Points. Even if you disagree with every decision he made, you will more fully understand why he did what he did, and how his desire to follow Christ motivated him.”
I might do so, based on the reasons you give, and the fact that many of his calls in policy and personnel truly bewilder me. I cannot accept the rhetoric that Islam is a religion of peace, however. That is just dead wrong at every level.
As for the ROP, I don't know if you're old enough to remember and appreciate the horror of those days after 9/11, but his outreach to moderate Islam (I know that can be argued) was, IMO, an absolute necessity to prevent a bloodbath in the streets. Even though we all know that there is violence in Islam it was critical to prevent further violence in this country between Muslims and the rest of it and he did it by making sure that the world knew we were not at war with all of Islam (and we aren't).
And if you look at the history of what happened and how calm it remained here, you can see that what he did worked.