At least some of the Classic/XT advocates did genuinely have Bitcoins best interests at heart, we just disagreed with their methods, we need to still respect them.
Exactly who might those be? Hearn, Gavin, maybe Toomin? 
I think Garzik is very likely to have his view of the best interests of the system driving his decisions. I would have said the same about Gavin, except after the CW fiasco I have little conviction as to his intentions. I think the best thing would be for him to stop supporting the counterproductive Classic attack for several months and then revaluate.
Gaining this victory was vital, it demonstrated the rules of the system are resilient, but at the same time weaknesses were exposed in the process.
One of the fundamental points of Bitcoin is this very resilience.I agree. This resilience does exists to some extent and the more resilient the better. However we must not be drawn into a false sense of security by thinking the system is perfectly resilient in this respect. This is why I think the actions of the developers in the HK agreement was unfortunately necessary and somewhat justified.
Giving in to such uneducated fools (if I may say) is not going to help anyone..
This is why we should do it form a position of strength. The Classic node count is down to 15% and the hashrate is around 5.5%. I still think these metrics are too high for a hardfork to 2MB. However if they fall further and Core looks stronger, then I think we should implement a hardfork to 2MB.