.....I don't think Alan Moore expected people to root for ANYONE.

A writer like that, writing a story like that, isn't caring about normal narratives about heroes and villains, about protagonists and sympathies and the like. He was writing to examine the concept of superheroism in general and to criticize it from multiple perspectives. To question it on every level he can. Rorshach is far from being above this criticism or examination. Take off the sympathy goggles and he is a man obsessed with a personal crusade that eats up his entire life and doesn't affect anything or make a difference. He neglects his personal life so much that he is homeless and its not clear why he even takes off the mask to go around in disguise except maybe to lay low to keep the cops off his tail probably. He probably doesn't have any real friends, there is no indication anyone sees his superhero guise as inspiring or even terrifying because there is no indication that most people even know OF him aside from the criminals that he has put in jail in the past and the police, painting him as this thug that goes around beating criminals up whom no one really knows about except the people whose job it is TO know about him. I'm pretty sure the intended reading is to look at this guy and think he sucks because he is supposed to represent what a superhero vigilante looks like when you strip away all the little tropey breaks from reality that make it look glamorous and worth it and try to see it what effect trying to act that way without any of those breaks from reality holding it up would look like, its essentially making someone act as close as you can to a superhero in a world where the tropes don't apply not for comedic effect but for dramatic effect.

Where he goes wrong is that he made Rorshach too cool anyways despite that not being his aim. To be fair, this was written in the 1980's and media wasn't the way it is now, thus he wouldn't have predicted the phenomenon that any fandom with a villainous character will inevitably have a section of it proclaim that character right as long as they're charismatic and cool enough. Rorshach with lines like "I'm not locked in here with you, your locked in here with ME!" and being defiant and choosing his principles in the face of death makes him look way too cool for those kind of people to not see him that way, add in the fact that he is the closest thing that Watchmen has to a protagonist and its not hard to see why the delivery was bungled a bit. Alan Moore gave the guy little too much respect and expected people to see that he was human not right when they're coming from a media of simplified black and white morality where beating up people for what is right and sacrificing yourself for a greater cause or principle Is Fine. Also he probably didn't count on people to unironically like him because of his flaws, because this kind of character appeals to people for whom being a Violent Thug is THE POINT.

Adrian Veidt of course, does not get off scott-free. He is quite obviously compared to Ozymandias, aka Alexander the Great and how his works are ruined and how all empires fall to sand and dust, quite simply the way he sucks is that he is a believer of Great Man Theory. He explicitly says that he only feels Alexander the Great would understand him, a conqueror when there are numerous examples of conquerors throughout history, Alexander the Great is hardly unique in that sense I doubt the people he conquered would see him in a good light, and sure he is a smart but that is no excuse to not make friends with people. he talks a big game about achieving everything though his "self-made man" persona, but the people who assist him his project he poisons to keep the secret hidden and safe and despite his attempt at saying wealth doesn't matter to him and he gave his inheritance away to start at nothing, he clearly made that money back and more, and you don't make that wealth alone and thus he can't really be credited for obtaining that wealth alone due to the many workers, scientists and so on that contributed along the way in some form or other, just as Alexander can't really be credited for his conquests alone due to all the soldiers and people under him making any of his plans possible. sure he treats people around and under him better than most and he actually walked the walked but fundamentally he attributing what is a matter of luck and the work of many people (getting rich) to his own skills which is the mistake every rich person makes and he is clearly willing to expend them without them knowing, and his whole self-realization thing where believes anyone can be great if they just try, ignores maslows hierarchy of needs where just because people have the potential to achieve such heights, doesn't mean everyone has the time, luck and resources to do so.

Furthermore his entire plan to stop the nuclear war is ridiculous and pretty much worked because he got lucky, the US could've easily suspected it was a weird form of russian nuke and fired back anyways, and the kind of genetic engineering he did to make that squid-monster thing is possible, I doubt its the kind of science that only he knows about. Silk Spectre and Nite Owl could still decide to reveal the plan if they feel its necessary. This plan could've went south, just not for the usual supervillain reasons. its very possible that due to how things were going that the nations were looking for an excuse to end the cold war anyways if they were this willing to suddenly declare an end to hostilities because of a random psychic octopus attack, which means he arguably cost millions of lives to accelerate the time tables a bit. There is also the fact that the nations wouldn't be moving up to Defcon 2 to the first place if he hadn't made Dr. Manhattan retreat to mars in the first place, a plan he made out of fear that he would stop this attack which was unfounded and even if he could there is no reason why being on Mars would matter, Dr. Manhattan is godlike, he got to Mars easily, he can easily get back to Earth just as fast, his entire plan with Dr. Manhattan was essentially done for nothing. That and the plan relies on like, one of the biggest deceptions in history which isn't tenable. Like y'know the saying about to cover up a lie, you have to keep making bigger and bigger lies? Yeah, uh, what would Veidt do when people start trying to find the aliens that he made them believe tried to invade? I doubt that even he has the money to fake a full alien invasion and surely if Mr. Veidt himself is to believed about humanity having potential to be great, someone could figure out how to solve the mystery of where the squid thing came from and trace it back to him sooner or later, I mean if someone like RORSHACH, y'know, the poor homeless violent thug who reads conspiracy theory newspapers and a couple friends can figure it out, what makes you think people with more resources, manpower, organization and so on CAN'T? Even if Rorshach's attempt at revealing the truth fails, that hardly means people can't figure it out some other way. he is a former superhero rich guy living in freaking Antartica! there's no way people aren't snooping on him, especially as the years go by and internet becomes more of a thing. his empire will crumble and given the times he lives in, it would be sooner rather than later. and whether he is right or not to do this all is irrelevant because HOW he did this matters and could make this all fall apart on everyone for the worse anyways sooner or later- his solution was only a delay, a stopgap, not a real one.

in short, Adrian Veidt is no one special. he is just another rich jerk who thinks he controls more than he actually does and got lucky- just like all the conquerors in the past with an empire.

If I'd accuse Alan Moore of anything, its of overestimating some readers, not all of them, many people are perfectly capable of seeing The Point, but lack of media literacy is rampant now and isn't particularly kind to stories like these which practically require media literacy to make sense of, but he wouldn't have known this state of how things would turn out back in 1986.