'Stamp Out This Disease': Kerry Calls on the World to Help Defeat ISIS Secretary of State John Kerry is calling for a "much fuller response" to fight against brutal Islamist militants in Iraq, and suggested that "airstrikes alone won't defeat this enemy." Kerry — in an op-ed published in The New York Times on Friday — wrote that the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) isn't satisfied wreaking havoc in Syria and Iraq, and "poses a threat well beyond that region" that could include strikes in the U.S. as well as "anywhere they could manage to travel undetected."