It's a 20 inch to 14.5 inch change, and while it might have made sense for Iraq, I gather that long range engagements in much less urban Afghanistan are so comm

It's a 20 inch to 14.5 inch change, and while it might have made sense for Iraq, I gather that long range engagements in much less urban Afghanistan are so common this is a big problem. And even in urban combat it's obviously inconvenient to not have an effective long arm for longer ranges. Losing 275 yards is not trivial. As I see it, it's favoring an optimization for urban combat over raw effectiveness in field combat. And it's not "the military", it's the Army. The Marines, who have seen plenty of action in Afghanistan, still use 20 inch M16s.