For the record, I am pretty on the fence about Dumbledore (I neither love or hate him), but I do want to pose a question- what would have happened if Dumbledore hadn't pulled the strings to make Harry what he was? Would Harry have been able to defeat Voldemort? Voldemort was a constant that wouldn't just go away, Dumbledore knew that. Voldemort had to be defeated, unless you want of course, the entire world to be controlled by him. Dumbledore had knowledge many others didn't (the true character of Voldemort, his Horcruxes, etc.). What would you have had Dumbledore do instead? I personally can see both sides of the issue, and I can't really say which side I stand on yet. I believe many actions of Dumbledore's were wrong, but I can see why he, has an imperfect human, chose to do them.
Is it wrong to manipulate people, especially children? 100%! Would Dumbledore have done so if Harry wasn't "The Chosen One?" Probably not.
Dumbledore wasn't evil. He had wrong ideas in his youth that he repented from and went on to become a champion of Muggle rights. We see when he drank the potion in the cave that he relived his regrets over his sister, Alberforth, and Grindlewald.
No one's perfect. JK Rowling showed us that with so many Harry Potter characters- Snape turned out to have some good in the end; Dumbledore turned out to have some bad in the end. As Sirius Black said, "We all have both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on."
(This definitely sounds like I am defending Dumbledore now
, but again, I really don't know where I stand and would like to have more conversation on the topic.)