President Barack Obama gave his second Oval Office speech of his presidency Tuesday night. He announced his decision and plans to officially end Operation Iraqi Freedom.

A marine, Cpl. Joe Verrant, who returned from Iraq in September of 2008, agreed with Obama on his decision to officially end the mission in Iraq.

“Since we did pull out, it’s a good thing,” Verrant said. “I think we did accomplish good things. There’s only so much you can do with the military in the Middle East. It’s all about the restructuring. What we were going to accomplish militarily over there we did accomplish. As soon as we left, the insurgents came back in. The insurgents were moving into the area to fight the U.S., so we pulled a lot in.”

Obama mentioned how the event of offensive troop withdrawal was a milestone for the nation.

Verrant agreed. “It is a milestone,” he said. “It was a drastic troop withdrawal, so yeah. For all intensive purposes it’s over.”

Verrant said he did not feel his time in Iraq was wasted.

“We did some humanitarian work but the only hostile situations were a couple of close calls with IEDs,” he said. “I think the longer you stay there, what can you expect to accomplish?”

Verrant said there is no simple way to tell when the U.S. won against Iraq.

“It would be very easy to say in Iraq that if you have a democratic government for the people, we would win,” he said. “Democracy is not a one size fits all.”