Many principles combine to form the foundation of our system of government, but one of the most important — if only in a practical sense — is the principle of civilian control of the military. The United States has been blessed with generations of military leaders who stayed out of partisan politics, who took orders they may not have agreed with and carried them out to the best of their ability.

In America, the government runs the military, not the other way around.

And so it is both striking and troubling that a string of retired senior generals have called for the head of their former civilian boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, for, in essence, screwing up the occupation of Iraq.

These calls — which have not been joined by active members of the military’s leadership — raise serious questions:

n To what extent did Rumsfeld and the “neocons” stifle dissent during the planning of the war?

n What are the ethical obligations of top officers confronted with orders from on high that they don’t agree with?

n When policy decisions don’t work, who is held accountable?

There were voices inside the Pentagon during the run-up to the war warning that it would cost more in blood and treasure than the official predictions. Those voices were silenced. Gen. Eric Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, was repudiated and retired soon after telling Congress that the war would take more money, men and time than the Pentagon claimed. His immediate civilian superior, Army Secretary Thomas White, was fired for agreeing with Shinseki.

Those removals, in a practical “the-decision-has-been-made” sense, were probably justified. But they also appear to have sent a signal to others in the service: If you tell Rumsfeld and company anything other than what they want to hear, you damage your career.

One may argue that if the six former generals foresaw the problems they now complain about, they should have resigned and made their concerns publicly known. But: The government runs the military, not the other way around. Shut up, salute, do your duty.

But when the pessimistic assessments proved accurate, whose head at the Pentagon rolled?

We have yet to see any accountability for the utter failure to recognize that we would be seen not as liberators but as occupiers; to recognize that as occupiers we bore the responsibility of maintaining at least the semblance of security; to recognize that Iraqi society was badly splintered and held together only by the crudest of violent compulsion.

Had the administration recognized these things, it might have grasped the need for more troops — the need that Shinseki and White saw and pointed out, the need that Rumsfeld and the neocons ignored, the need that the six retired generals are pointing out in retrospect.

This is part of the defense of his boss that Gen. Peter Pace, now the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered last week:

“Nobody, nobody works harder than he does to take care of the PFCs and lance corporals and lieutenants and the captains. He does his homework. He works weekends, he works nights. People can question my judgment or his judgment, but they should never question the dedication, the patriotism and the work ethic of Secretary Rumsfeld.”

We don’t question his dedication, patriotism and work ethic. We question his judgment. We question his results.

And if we had a president willing to recognize mistakes and hold people accountable for them, perhaps the men who tried and failed to carry out Rumsfeld’s designs wouldn’t now need to point out his failings.