Twenty-three years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military withdrew its final troops from the country on Wednesday. In a statement, Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said the expectation is that the Iraqi Security Forces will continue to secure the country on its own to keep ISIS at bay.
“This milestone reflects the success of a 12-year campaign that defeated ISIS as an organized military threat in Iraq and across the region. It also marks a transition from a wartime coalition mission to an Iraqi-led security effort supported by a more normal bilateral security relationship,” Parnell said in the statement.
The U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003 on the premise that then-President Saddam Hussein was harboring weapons of mass destruction. Even though no WMDs were ever found, the U.S. stayed in Iraq to help establish a new government for the country. Amid the shifting political landscape, ISIS fighters emerged in 2013, taking over large parts of Iraq and Syria, extending the stay of US troops.
While the US withdrawal now raises questions about the future of Iraq, many Massachusetts veterans are spending the day reflecting on their past experiences.
Andrew Biggio, an Everett native, joined the United States Marine Corps after graduating from high school. He was deployed to Iraq in 2008 and spent six years serving as a sergeant in Iraq and Afghanistan before returning to Massachusetts and joining the Boston Police Department as an officer.
Biggio said both of grandfathers served in World War II, so he had always planned on following in their footsteps. The attacks of 9/11 increased his resolve. “Sept. 11 was my Pearl Harbor, basically, and I just felt the need to serve,” he said.
For Biggio, the United States’ withdrawal from Iraq is a complicated one. In August of 2021, the US completed its full withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, which led to the collapse of the Afghan government and allowed the Taliban to regain control of the country. While Biggio would like to remain optimistic about the United States’ withdrawal from Iraq, he fears history could repeat itself.
“It’s almost impossible to talk about your feelings about pulling out of Iraq without talking about the fall of Afghanistan,” Biggio said. “As a veteran, that was a huge blow to all of our self-esteem, because we lost thousands of guys in Afghanistan. We were supposed to uproot the Taliban, get rid of al-Qaeda, and then the Taliban are in charge of the whole country again. So, we won every battle, but lost the war. And that’s a very hard pill to swallow as a veteran.”
Like Biggio, Andrew Coville also fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan. A former U.S. marine, he was born and raised in Cape Cod.
When a military recruiter called Coville, he decided to go straight to Marine Corps bootcamp with his best friend Nick Xiarhos. Before he enlisted, Coville had never left the east coast before, let alone the country. His experiences at war opened his eyes to the United States’ role in conflicts abroad.
“It showed me the scale of what it looks like when the United States gets involved in these conflicts,” Coville said. ‘You take a 19-, 20-, 21-year-old kid who’s barely left home and now you’re in the Middle East in this war-torn country, it’s a massive culture shock. It really opened my eyes to the reality of America’s footprint in the world.”
Coville’s years of service did not come without its sacrifices. Xiarhos, the friend he enlisted with, was killed in combat in Afghanistan in July 2009. The loss was devastating for Coville.
“When I got honorably discharged in 2010, I was very lost and that was a very difficult time to go through after my friend and a lot of other marines were killed, too,” Coville said.
For Coville, writing and filmmaking became important outlets to compartmentalize his emotional distress. Recently, Coville has been working on a documentary with a friend from high school about Xiarhos’ life and legacy.
“I’d always had this idea that I wanted to tell my friend Nick Xiarhos’ story and show that he didn’t just die in Afghanistan. He lived. He wasn’t this mythical war hero. He was a real person who had friends, family, and meant a lot to a lot of people,” Coville said. “So, I decided I wanted to start doing that, and I wrote out a screenplay as a documentary.”
Biggio also turned to the arts to make sense of his experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. He wrote two books, “The Rifle” and “The Rifle 2,” which tell the stories of veterans from across history.
“Writing and interviewing veterans has been a total outlet for me,” Biggio said. “It’s been a therapeutic mission for me because you get to see what other veterans went through and how they lived a successful life after the military.”
While the completion of the United States’ withdrawal brought up some old wounds, Coville hopes that today, his fellow veterans are able to find closure.
“Everyone who served in Iraq did what they were asked to do by the country and should be proud of it,” Coville said. “And you know a lot of people sacrificed a lot for that war, and some people are still fighting that war within themselves. And I hope that seeing this finality to it gives them the courage to kind of look within and decide what that period of their life meant to them.”
