TL;DR: Yes.

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You're asking one of the biggest historiographical questions of the First World War, one that was hotly debated at one point but is now, quite conclusively, decided upon. With this question, was the Battle of the Somme a 'good choice', we must ask ourselves a series of questions:

1. Was it necessary?

2. Does Douglas Haig, necessarily, deserve the credit or blame on the tactical errors of the first day?

3. Did it do what it was intended to do?

4. Was it, overall, a net positive for the Allied war effort?

So let's hit this from start to finish.

(1)

Yes, it was completely necessary. The French were getting creamed at Verdun, by the end of July the French warned that there would not be a French army left to assist the British. The Brits were in a not-so-conundrum-conundrum: They could not partake in an offensive and withdrawal as the French theater was bound to collapse without interference or they could perform an offensive to draw weight off of the French burden. Could the Brits not have withdrew, used superior sea power, both indirectly and directly? They tried that at Gallipoli and it failed horribly; it just wasn't there yet for massive seaborn invasions.The Western Front was where Britain had to fight as it was the best possible place to meet Germany and beat them. They couldn't wait for more tanks, which Haig would have preferred, as they were on the clock as well. The circumstances demanded an immediate infantry attack to siphon focus away from Verdun.

The Somme was, honestly, one of the best choices of areas to attack as well. It was the connecting point between British and French lines which means they could do a dual offensive in mutual support. It was wide open ground which meant no massive mining operations to hold them off while also, unlike Ypres, being completely dry ground. However, we must also recognize the very real political fact that after the Somme it was done for. It was total war; this was the point of no return. Diplomacy still had potential before this; peace envoys were still being sent either way before this point. After this all sides were fully committed; there was no chance for peace until one side was totally defeated. Between August 1914 and June 1916 the British Army lost 522,206 men and from July 1916 to November 1918 they lost 2,183,930. 73% of the financial burden of the war, 8,742,000,000 pounds, occurred after July 1st 1916. However it was still necessary if the British wanted the best chance at victory. The French were about to be creamed and, with the Russians also starting the Brusilov Offensive, there was legitimate chance that they could 'squeeze' the Germans out from all side. Britain didn't want to be the one ally who sat on the sidelines while the war was lost and everyone else was fighting for their lives.

(2)

No. He does not. Haig little more than chose the area of attack and said that it was going to happen. General Sir Henry Rawlinson, Commander of the Fourth Army, was the one in charge of how the actual plan of attack would go. It irks me endlessly that Haig is thrown into the grinder for all the faults of the first day but it was Rawlinsons decisions that were truly responsible for the loss of life. Rawlinson based his plan on three assumptions:

• His army was largely unskilled.

• That his artillery was powerful enough to destroy German defences, line by line, but not more than one line at a time.

• That there was little possibility of a breakthrough followed by cavalry actions.

As there was no breakthrough there was no need to concentrate a decisive force at any particular point so both artillery and infantry were even spread out. Rushing the lines was not necessary as the artillery was to have mostly removed the threat of German resistance; despite Haig's insistence otherwise. Rawlinson believed the artillery would conquer the land and the infantry would just occupy it; and this was not a dumb thing to believe because it's precisely what the Germans did at Verdun. It had worked not only before but recently. Honestly it's a situation where if it had worked Rawlinson would have been praised, to this day, as a mastermind of simplicity; artillery shelled the first lines, infantry advanced and occupied, artillery moved up and hit the second line, rinse and repeat. Whereas Haig, on the other hand, wanted a more 1918 styled approach of rapid, hurricane barrages followed by rapid infantry advance and seizure of the lines. Ultimately a mixture of these plans would be accepted.

It's worth noting that two of the three divisions in the Fourth Army which saw wild success on the infamous first day, the 36th Ulster and the 18th Eastern Divisions, were the ones who threw the 'new' tactical pamphlet out the window and used frontline bomber parties which followed the barrage to immediately strike at the German lines following the barrages lifting. The 18th Eastern Division notably took the German front line in their first rush. More significantly those that followed most closely to Rawlinsons tactical pamphlets of slow advance and no advanced bomber parties suffered the highest casualties. The French, who did not use a wave system but used small tactical squads, captured the entire German front line trench in their sector within an hour; but that may also be due to the fact they had 4x the amount of heavy guns than the Brits so that's up in the air. By the 14th of July these tactical fantasies began to break down in lieu of what was actually working more progress began to be made. But we must remember, again, that he was not stupid he was just trying to copy what was already working for the Germans. He felt he had a largely untrained mob that was incapable of performing tactically sophisticated maneuvers and that by complicating things that would doom them to failure.

(3) & (4)

Also yes. The three original aims for the battle were, in some way or another, fulfilled. Even on the first day the relief on the Verdun front was enacted by the Germans. They swung a wild amount of men from there to the Somme Front immediately and the French began to hit back hard. The positions held by the Allies by the end of the offensive was, as you can see from the above picture, better than where they started. This would be further exemplified when the Germans enacted Operation Alberich, retreating to a newly built massive defensive line which ceded even more territory. This ties into the last one which is that the Brits did win the game of attrition in this offensive. The Germans lost the core of their battle hardened army and we know from their own personal writings in the Generals Staff they were freaking TERRIFIED of another Somme. Hence Operation Alberich; they were fortifying the most dangerous position on the front where the French and Brits could tag team them.