Dear President Obama:

You knew, or had reason to believe, when you chose Gen. Stanley McChrystal as your "man in Afghanistan," that this was the same Gen. Stanley McChrystal responsible for the Pat Tillman cover-up. I quote from the Rolling Stone article that has set your blood to boiling:

After Cpl. Pat Tillman, the former-NFL-star-turned-Ranger, was accidentally killed by his own troops in Afghanistan in April 2004, McChrystal took an active role in creating the impression that Tillman had died at the hands of Taliban fighters. He signed off on a falsified recommendation for a Silver Star that suggested Tillman had been killed by enemy fire. (McChrystal would later claim he didn't read the recommendation closely enough – a strange excuse for a commander known for his laserlike attention to minute details.) A week later, McChrystal sent a memo up the chain of command, specifically warning that President Bush should avoid mentioning the cause of Tillman's death. "If the circumstances of Corporal Tillman's death become public," he wrote, it could cause "public embarrassment" for the president.

"The false narrative, which McChrystal clearly helped construct, diminished Pat's true actions," wrote Tillman's mother, Mary, in her book Boots on the Ground by Dusk. McChrystal got away with it, she added, because he was the "golden boy" of Rumsfeld and Bush, who loved his willingness to get things done, even if it included bending the rules or skipping the chain of command. Nine days after Tillman's death, McChrystal was promoted to major general.

And now the chickens have come home to roost. Tell me, Mr. President, what were you thinking when you decided to entrust the future of roughly 30 million Afghans (not to mention the war you have chosen to promote against a counter-imperialist insurgency) to the hands of a known perpetrator of fraud?

In the immortal words of Crates of Thebes: "A man should study philosophy until he sees in generals nothing more than donkey drivers."

When, Mr. President, did you think would be the right time to begin to call upon your common sense?

Fire McChrystal. Turn him over to the Justice Dept. Begin the withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.

In short: Do the right thing.

["The Runaway General" by Michael Hastings appears in Rolling Stone 1108/1109 from July 8-22, 2010].