"Military leaders, many of whom were students of counterinsurgency, recognized the dangers of an incremental escalation, and the historical lesson that 'trailing' an insurgency typically condemned counterinsurgents to failure," he writes.
Bush used much of the speech to warn of what he called the growing ISIS "pandemic," and laid out a foreign policy agenda that included a greater military presence in Iraq, as opposed to the Obama administration's "minimalist approach of incremental escalation".
"News that the United States has once again used military force in Iraq, by launching airstrikes, is deeply disturbing -- the risks of mission creep, unintended consequences, and incremental escalation are real and dangerous.
If the UN troops are no longer able to carry out humanitarian aid, whether backed by extra forces or not, the alternatives would then be stark - either incremental escalation with our forces sucked into becoming a participant in this war or withdrawal of our troops.
In these conversations, McNamara and the national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, offer no convincing alternative to incremental escalation.
The White House has been vague on whether a more incremental escalation from Moscow might also trigger the most severe sanctions.
We're then but a short distance away from an even worse future for minority groups as the next incremental escalation happens.
With the incremental escalations, they say, Mr. Assad has prevented the West from finding cause to enter the war, as NATO did against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya after he rolled out almost all of his military's full might at the war's outset.
"It may be seen by the market as an incremental step in a possible longer-term escalation of problems in the core oil producing nations of Saudi Arabia and Iran," he told Bloomberg News.
