I wholeheartedly agree, more and better robot explorers. OTOH, manned flights to Martian orbit, and establishment of an orbiting permanent station around Mars would be a good first step *toward* human landings on the planet, and an ideal location from which to directly operate surface robotic rovers and robotic construction machinery to build the first surface habitats.
Putting people in orbit isn’t that much cheaper than putting them on the planet and does nothing to mitigate the biggest problem: radiation exposure.