If there is abundant water in some form on Mars then we can send equipment that can convert it to drinking water, hydrogen fuel and oxygen.
With water we can grow food there, with hydrogen and oxygen we can power vehicles and will have fuel for returning spacecraft.
Water is the thing we need there that we cannot take with us.
Making electricity on Mars is easy, solar and nuclear...but water needs to be found there waiting for us.
Long-term thinking: Find and divert an ice asteroid/moon into Mars atmosphere at the proper angle. Even tho most of it would “burn up” it would still add some necessary components to the Martian atmosphere. And some amount of water/ice as well.
I read there’s ice aplenty circling Saturn. There’s probably some in the asteroid belt, who knows that?
Once government is established Mars’ future is over.
No, it isn't easy. In fact, power will be the key limiting factor preventing the early and/or easy (much less cheap) attainment of permanent presence on Mars. Solar flux is half that of Earth's, meaning that twice the mass of solar arrays have to be soft-landed on a planet with twice the gravity of the Moon, so evaluate that multiplicative factor of four by the rocket equation. It's ugly.
Nuclear could provide the requisite power levels, except that a space reactor of appropriate size (10 megawatt-class) does not exist -- and won't for the foreseeable future.