Kraig -
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I'm talking Infantry, not soldiers per se
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The current Army or at least the one I was a member of 3+ years ago has more service and support troops being engaged than infantry.
Terrorist see our supply trains as a weakness, so in the end non infantry, rangers end up seeing more IEDs and combat than line troops.
You have no say over when a IED is going to go off and you are forced by the situation to do a forced entry in order to take up a better more defensible position or simply because the urban terrain and the volume of fire dictates there are no other choices.
We always tried to use speed as a defense and it works pretty well but the situation is fluid. The second thing to keep in mind is the terrorist have learned at some great cost that fighting our line units is expensive so they as a generalized statement of my experience seem to avoid them unless there trying to ambush them with some fairly well thought out trap. The exception is there are always those that want a dirt nap a little sooner because they have whatever belief that drives them to a kind of suicide by troop.
Supply convoys on the other hand still have well trained and well armed troops but life happens, vehicles break, IEDs go off, animals and children get in the way.
Lastly in regards to (80%) of the troops are not complaining. Just because 80% of the troops didnt write a letter or whatever complaining doesnt mean they arent unhappy with 5.56mm. How much of the US population overall votes on anything? Its the same thing in the military, 20% is a pretty significant number when you realize how much it takes to get some people to even take a stance.
Further not all troops ever end up under enemy fire or are even allowed ammunition to respond to fire depending on the local command. The saying we had was its better you die then end up doing something on the news but thats for a different conversation.