I'd like to add something here. The comics don't support this interpretation of Optimus Prime. Let's look to the IDW comic "The Death of Optimus Prime" (spoilers for a comic that's getting close to a decade old now, I guess).
Prime wakes up three weeks in the future, on a Cybertron that doesn't resemble the Cybertron he remembers. He finds his way to what he refers to as "...a shanty town, a bomb site, or a spaceport gone to seed..." but his GPS tells him is Iacon, which is now populated by unaffiliated Cybertronians who had fled the war (Labeled NAILs, Non-Affiliated Indigenous Lifeforms). Prime finds out that Vector Sigma had sent out a signal to all of them, telling them to come home. And when they came home they found Cybertron in ruins. And from there they saw the Autobots as symbols of the war that drove them away from and subsequently ravaged their home planet. Over the subsequent weeks tensions between the Autobots and the NAILs continuously grows, neither side willing to give any ground and the Autobots becoming something of an occupying force attempting to keep the NAILs in line. These tensions come to a boil when a massive group of protesters gather outside of the Autobot HQ. And eventually, a protester throws a power cell and
Now we don't know if it was the NAILs who escalated this to violence or maybe one of the Autobots attempting to perform crowd control got a little carried away, all we're told by Sideswipe is that "It's escalating out here", and this is the first act of violence we see take place in the protest. As far as the audience and the Autobots who were holed up inside HQ are concerned, the protester throwing the power cell is the first act of violence at the protest. With the Autobots vastly outnumbered and the protest becoming more and more of a riot, Prowl decides he has no choice but to release their imprisoned Decepticons into the crowd as crowd control (They're inhibited from using their alt modes or built-in weapons, but c'mon they're Decepticons how do you think their attempt at crowd control is going to go). And from there the riot turns into a battlefield. So let's review what's happened here.
-The tensions between the Autobots and the NAILs have essentially become irreconcilable, with the Autobots seeing the demands of the NAILs as unreasonable (which to be fair they sort of are), and the NAILs seeing the Autobots as symbols of the war that drove them away from and ravaged their home planet for four million years.
-what was originally a peaceful protest has devolved into complete chaos and violence, with the protesters being the ones who fired first as far as the audience and the Autobots are concerned.
-The Autobots then escalate further by releasing what remains of the ruthless and violent Decepticons into the crowd in an attempt to regain control.
Now, what does Optimus Prime do? Does he condemn the protesters and instruct his Autobots to do everything they can to suppress them (ex giving the Decepticons access to the built in weaponry and alt modes back so they can more effectively control the crowd)? No. He calls out to the crowd. He asks them to listen to him, and he tells them that he is accountable to them. He acts not in the interest of the Autobots nor in the interest of the NAILs, But in the interests of the Cybertronian race itself. He recognizes himself as a symbol of the war the NAILs fled, and as an obstacle to peace. As such, he
exiles himself from Cybertron in the hopes that it will decrease tensions enough for the NAILs and the Autobots to resolve the issue and perhaps even make peace.
Optimus did not view the concerns of the NAILs or their movement as invalid because they caused death and destruction in their frustration towards the Autobots. He recognized that simply employing more and more force in an effort to suppress the violent protesters would do nothing to acknowledge the underlying issue that led to this and would only inevitably lead to more violence. He did what was within his power to address the issue.
