The Lexus slogan is “In the relentless pursuit of perfection.” Just about every company would love to achieve perfection. Unfortunately for the U.S. Military, President Bush and millions of Americans expect the military to be perfect.

During the opening days of the campaign, a survey revealed that 76 percent of Americans expected fewer than 100 casualties. In order to gain support, Bush assured a swift military act that would overthrow the regime in Iraq. However, Bush was a little too optimistic, and the American people are dismayed and will make him pay the price for his arrogant predictions.

The planning for this war has always seemed rushed and never seemed liked it was properly thought out. The arrogance of the administration resulted in several miscalculations. While none of them will severely damage military operations, they will hurt the public’s perceptions on how the administration is handling the war.

One of the more amusing things in the past months is Donald Rumsfeld’s repeated attempts to convince us that dropping leaflets over Iraq would cause thousands of troops to surrender or betray Saddam. The entire rationale behind this is ridiculous. If some country kept on telling me to defect, I probably wouldn’t. In fact, it would anger me and only increase my hatred towards them. It’s true that some troops have laid down their arms but not nearly as many as were hoped for. Rumsfeld’s smirk disappears every time he is asked about the propaganda campaign because even he has come to realize it has been a failure.

We’ve misread the Iraqis in general. We expected most of the military to surrender because they want to be freed from Saddam’s tyrannical ways. However, it goes beyond that: Iraqis aren’t fighting just for Saddam, they’re defending their country. Iraqi forces are fighting us based on their hatred of America, not because of their loyalty to Saddam.

Bush didn’t spend enough time prepping America for the realities of war. Many Americans are too naïve – even though we have the most advanced weapons in the world, we will still suffer casualties. Rumsfeld and his cronies should have slowly prepared Americans for the harsh consequences of war. Instead, they decided to keep us on Cloud Nine, and Americans are now stunned at the resistance that we’re facing.

Many Americans have some sort of blind patriotism that led them to believe we would overrun the Iraqi military in days. These cocky views slowly diminished as we lost several tanks, helicopters and other military equipment. The concept of losing soldiers seems to boggle some people’s minds and it’s unacceptable in their eyes.

The problem is that Bush kept on droning on about how easy this war would be. His scenario was obviously the best-case scenario and he didn’t bother giving America more realistic cases. When you guarantee “a quick resolution,” it had better mean days. Bush has yet to realize the American people have a severe case of ADD, and they expect quick results. If CNN isn’t reporting progress every 15 minutes, something is wrong.

Though we’ve miscalculated several things, we’re crushing Iraq. By military standards, our accomplishments so far are stunning. We’ve covered twice as much ground as the Desert Storm force without the extensive advance bombing they had. Our casualties are also very low considering a majority have been caused by friendly fire or military accidents.

Still, the “shock and awe” campaign hasn’t resulted in massive surrenders and we’re facing heavy resistance in the south, but everyone – including Saddam – knows the final result. Only Bush could butcher the various political gains a victory can ensure.

Since U.S. forces are facing more resistance than planned, it seems like we’re suffering from poor planning. Bush should hope this war ends very soon; the longer it goes, the less political clout he has. He has relied heavily on the outcome of this war to power his agenda in Congress. But if the war starts to drag on or the casualties seem too high in the public eye, Bush can forget about his influence and should start to salvage his re-election bid.

Vijay Ramanavarapu is a sophomore in business. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].