The Pentagon's Spokesman is A Jody

Dear Crew of the USS Tom Clancy,

Please enjoy a quick dispatch that’s not part of the American Odyssey series (which you should read!) and that I’m keeping free for the widest possible distribution.

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Matt

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Yesterday, the Pentagon’s spokesman, a failed Pennsylvania politician and professional VetBro named Sean Parnell, tweeted this:

This tweet was in response to a large public outcry about the conditions aboard the USS Lincoln, an Aircraft Carrier deployed to the Persian Gulf to current round of the 40 year war in the Middle East.

Parnell’s used to this sort of shit. Old hat for him.

He’s also one of the most full of shit soldiers I’ve ever interacted with—and my last two years in the Army I was around a lot of field grade officers.

I’d call him Sean, but that would imply a jovial familiarity or friendship with him.

I know Sean. I don’t like him. I like most people.

We went to war together, different companies in the same battalion. There’s about four LTs (Lieutenants) to a company. Most of them still get along, talk. I still chat with a few of the LTs, who are all Colonels or out of the Army. We’re supposed to have a reunion on Fort Drum next year, our twenty year war reunion.

Somehow, I don’t think American Hero Sean Parnell will show up to his own Army battalion’s reunion, because most of his fellow Catamounts won’t talk to him. Plus, quite a few might just beat his ass, worse and with less love than when he got beat into the platoon (I assume he got beaten into his platoon the way we beat our LT—who was awesome—into ours).

Speaking of beatings:

Here’s Parnell saying he didn’t really beat or choke his ex-wife, Laurie Snell. She testified to it under penalty of perjury, so I figure I can trust one’s account more than the other.

Plus, I knew Laurie when she was married to another Catamount, my old Executive Officer. Met her at the mandatory fun BBQ post deployment and had a great conversation over beers. After we got back from that really long deployment, OEF VII & OEF VIII, there was a year before the Catamounts redeployed again.

I didn’t go with them. I was sent down to a new assignment at TRADOC headquarters in Virginia.

Sean, who’d gotten injured in Afghanistan on that first deployment, remained with the Catamounts as the Rear Detachment Commander.

Essentially, he was the highest ranking BrokeDick Catamount in New York while the rest of his boys were back in Afghanistan for what sounded (from my old platoon mates) like an even worse tour.

Except I guess his dick wasn’t broke, because he promptly started fucking my old XO’s wife, Laurie, as soon as XO redeployed.

XO is on the right in this photograph.

I like XO. He’s a nut, I think politically, and closer to Parnell in that department, but he’s still my friend.

Don’t believe me. Here’s a paraphrase of something an Officer in his Company told me (Sean, if you’re having your female assistant read this to you since your literacy is in question, you know exactly who this is and you know he’s everything you aren’t.

“Dude, the story of how they got together is downright dirty. I know all the details. I even advised him it was a mistake after I found out who he was fucking around with…the ego on Parnell was something else. As evidenced by his book. Which I stopped reading a quarter of the way through.”

Parnell may deny being a wifebeater, but he can’t deny being a Jody.

All of the living Catamounts have his number.

He didn’t just fuck over his fellow officers. I could, actually, forgive that—the Jody thing, not the spousal or child abuse—mostly because I despise officers enough that when one hurts another, I smile. (watching the Service Academy Football Rivalries always makes me smile, imagining those future officers hurting each other).

Can I forgive Parnell?

Nope. He fucked over one of his own soldiers, when that soldier was asking for his help.

I wrote about it in Harper’s a while back, you can read that here in full, but the relevant clips are below:

For a while, when I was hanging out with Doug Laux and he was still receiving fallout from ex CIA colleagues after his book released, I would use Parnell as an example of the difference between CIA and the Army.

CIA’s a bunch of bloodthirsty, sexually coercive sociopaths from the upper and upper middle class who get their jollies manipulating scumbag traitors and rats for the Clandestine Service. It makes sense that they’d turn on their own. We in the Army handled our blowhards differently.

The dialogue, reconstructed in my mind, went a little something like this:

You know, Doug, your CIA buddies want to kill you for writing about Shkin (a CIA base in Paktika) This Lieutenant who was at Bermel (an Army outpost in paktika) wrote a book that was total bullshit and none of us said anything, because 1: Bermel was a really bad place and those guys went through hell and 2: Everyone knew Parnell was just a knob-slobbing Future Politician and we wanted our guys to do well after the war. Especially since so many of them wound up killing themselves after the deployment. We can let this one go.

Anyway, Doug’s dead now and Sean’s in the E-ring.

I really shouldn’t have let it go.

So, here it is, too little too late.

Sean Parnell is a piece of shit. He’s a liar, he’d run over his own mother to get a slight edge politically. No one who’s spent anytime in close proximity to him seems to care for him—including, I might add, officials in both the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House I talk to from time to time.

The call has always been coming from inside the house.

The best of the Catamounts died young.

The worst went on to spin for the machine that killed his men.

I’m not sure which is the greater tragedy.

-Matt Farwell

This next part is addressed directly to the Pentagon Spokesperson:

Parnell,

Anytime you want to talk about this one on one, we can make that happen.

(You know the old man doesn’t like you, right?)

Name the time, and I’ll name the place.

I’ll be eating Oysters at Old Ebbitt, at the far bar on the left.

I’ll know you’ve arrived when the room is awash in Axe Body Spray.

I’ll tell you to your face you’re a disgrace. I’ll ask if you felt like a man choking your wife and terrifying your children. I’ll ask if you felt like a man fucking your deployed comrade’s wife. You’re welcome to take a swing at me, because dumb brutal violence in inappropriate venues is the only thing—besides gargling the balls of the rich and powerful—that you’ve got some aptitude for, and I want to give you an opportunity to succeed.

Should you do that: I’ll remind you that since Afghanistan, though (when your men did your fighting for you while you cowered in a up-armor ‘trying to radio higher on TAC SAT’) you’ve only gotten in fights with those smaller and weaker than you.

You’ve been in DC, getting weaker, I’ve been out in the Mountains getting stronger.

Motto Vires Montesque Vincimus

Farwell

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