I had spent my entire adult life in the SEAL teams. My platoon conducted dynamic direct action missions and capture killed scores of enemy personnel. We were ambushed a few times and shot at with RPGs and machine guns. Baghdad felt more like an exciting adventure for me and my platoon than a war. I returned from that deployment feeling as if we had done our share. But that arrogance was kept in check by a reminder that lived in another corner of my mind.