I agree entirely. Strategically, it was and remains brilliant.
It also gives us a geographically central staging site for pacifying the region. And, conveniently, it results in Iran surrounded. It's a much more valuable position than our former site in Saudi Arabia. (Having said that, we should have left some operations intact in Saudi Arabia. Pulling all operations out was a propaganda victory for the Islamists, for whom U.S. presence in Saudi was an irritant.)