I'm not apologizing. My protection of the page was justified. It received support beforehand and I have since noticed that it has been defended. 

BTW, this comment on the mailing list by Jimmy Wales seems to support my action: "Sysops should generally not edit a page that has been protected due to

a dispute, whether or not they were involved in the edit war to start

with.  I say "generally not" because of course there can be

exceptions, for example rolling back to a version before the edit war

might be useful in some cases, or attempting a one-shot temporary

compromise."

What I did followed the guidelines, according to the exceptions Mr. Wales explained above. My edits only rolled back to a version before the edit war, the version without the incoherent, poorly written essay. Before the edit war, I had not even read the page, let alone edit it.

When my sysop privileges are reinstated, I promise to continue following the protected page guidelines.