It's easy to point out the various mistakes characters have made through their inexperience, navitity or idiotic nobility, but you've gone further than that; your post begins to unpick the underlying assumptions with which RJ approached the series. One of them, put simplistically, is that good people don't do bad things even for a good cause. Of course there have been exceptions to this rule, but they tend to be used to emphasise this principle, not undermine it. Dark!Rand starts lashing about with balefire as he slips into insanity and despair. Perrin reluctantly starts a war to free his people, but spends so much of his time hating himself for it that he fails to be an effective leader. Meanwhile, Egwene refuses to invade Tar Valon, despite having the opportunity and means, because it would be 'wrong' - stretching out the siege for weeks, time that could have been spent preparing the White Tower for Tarmon Gai'don. Nynaeve defeats Moghedian, but is so focused on 'bringing her to justice' that she lets one of the most dangeorus women in the world escape.

I think the problem with the books is, as you've said, that RJ always provides a more palatable alternative to harsh decisions. Considering that the WoT books are meant to be the story of several cascading and increasingly violent revolutions leading up to a final, earth-shattering apocolypse, there have been precious few truly desperate situations, and until Dark!Rand, almost no morally repugnant decisions. RJ has charted a path for his heroes which may be difficult and may make them suffer but always gives them a 'right thing to do'. And the readers are happy with this, because most of us subconsciously believe this is how the world really is.

Another belief we tend to have is that of the 'reward' - how many people on this board think that after Tarmon Gai'don, Rand will somehow live, those Aiel we like will survive, the White Tower will return to honour and strength, and the various characters we've grown fond of will finally be able to settle down and pursue their own interests and causes? But even a cursory analysis of the last Breaking makes this appealing vision look unlikely in the extreme - Lews Therin saved the world by plunging it into chaos, and it was centuries before the rubble stopped bouncing. Certainly no one who saw the beginning of the Breaking lived to see it end. But we tend to believe the myth that self-sacrifice deserves reward, and may even feel somewhat betrayed if our characters do not recieve it.

So, yes, I do agree that the characters have had an artificially easy time of it in some respects, but I think our cultural assumptions at large are more to blame for this than RJ in particular. It's also likely that people have written more believable books, but I suspect they don't sell so well.