In a way, YES he had deserved it.
Interestingly, while Draco has done a lot of things in HBP that objectively deserve much cursing, it was his face-stomping Harry that made him so very unforgivable in many's eyes (probably because he neither cried over nor was punished, or looked like will *ever* be punished for it
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Oh no, I think both are perfectly valid; I just don't think they make complete sense on their own. But you can look at one of these situations and hold the motivational aspect into higher consideration than the final outcome, or vice versa, and it's still a valid way to judge the situation. From Ron's attacking Draco in PS to Draco's releasing the Death Eaters into Hogwarts in HBP, JKR has always been careful to give us both sides of the problem: the violence, and what motivated the violence. So if you're looking only at one or the other, it's not as though you're misreading the canon.
it's hardly individual conflicts that aren't partial outcome of (a) previous one(s), and they almost always have bearing on future conflicts that are bound to come along- it's a vicious cycle. The motivations behind each of their nasty words and actions against each other, except for the earliest ones, were almost 100% to hurt the other party. Draco got most of the blame because he certainly has initiated most of the fights, and his words are often nastier and unacceptable by today's society, but hasn't Harry also elevated the level of their fued by being the first to resort to physical violence?
I really do see this. I'll admit that I'm not much on the H/D interaction, so probably won't be able to articulate well, but my general gist is that I completely agree with your assessment of their relationship being a huge, vicious cycle. Harry hurts Draco, Draco lashes back, Harry lashes right back, Draco keeps pushing a little further gradually until Harry lashes back; eventually the old provocations aren't enough and therefore get deeper, and Harry lashes back, Draco lashes back, Harry lashes back, etc, etc. Although I think schoolyard aspect of it came to a head in the post-Quidditch fight, in which I think Draco insulted Harry's mother as a person for the first time (no longer just "she's dead, boo hoo") and Harry attacked Draco physically for the first time -- not afterwards, when it becomes far more than schoolyard rivalry. I've never quite seen how the D.A's randomly popping up and hexing Draco and Co. factors into Harry and Draco's relationship as it stands. It's just as possible that Harry could have been cornered at the opposite end of the train from the D.A., and Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws have never had anything to do with the situation between Harry and Draco (unlike, say, Ron and Hermione, or even the Weasley twins).
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You perhaps wouldn't be misreading canon, relying on just one perspective of looking at things- but that's never my biggest concern though. Take the GOF train scene for example, I could not be sure then if those who read it as "the Gryff guys were doing no wrong" had the author's backing, but I would disagree with them in principle no matter what Rowling true intention there was- I am not arguing about how that scene should "correctly" be read, I simply disagree with the notion that the Gryff guys were doing the "right" thing, regardless of what Rowling has intended us to think.
I've never quite seen how the D.A's randomly popping up and hexing Draco and Co. factors into Harry and Draco's relationship as it stands.
I totally agree! That's why I did not use that incident as an example of their starting-a-fight-and-ended-up-receiving-a-disproportional-backlash pattern of interaction, it was a nasty accident really. As a Draco fan I felt very badly for him in that scene (oh the humiliation that is being turned into a non-human and left there to *ooze*!), but I never considered it Harry's "fault". It's not like they knew how to turn the three of them back into human had they wanted to, and it would be asking too much to wish they had gone and fetch a teacher to help.
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