Amaryllis Fox worked for the CIA.
She was an honest-to-goodness spy, but not the kind you see in the movies.
No, far from the glitz and glam Hollywood portrays, she witnessed some of the most powerful and horrible things our world has to offer.
An officer in the Clandestine unit, she worked all around the world in counter-terrorism and intelligence.
In all of her time with the CIA, working with complex and morally ambiguous issues, she took one lesson to heart: Listen to your enemy.
Touching on everything from foreign policy to religion and war, Amaryllis explains why it’s so important to treat everybody like a human being, regardless of where they come from or what they are saying.
The people we see as our enemies also see us as their enemies. And as long as we continue to treat the other like an inhuman threat, ignoring all sense of connection, dialogue and communication, we won’t get anywhere.
“An Al-Queda figher made a point once during a de-briefing. He said all these movies that America makes, like Independence Day and Hunger Games and Star Wars, they’re all about a small scrappy band of rebels who will do anything in their power with the limited resources available to them, to expel an outside, technologically advanced invader. And what you don’t realize, he said, is that to us, to the rest of the world, you are the empire and we are Luke and Han, you are the aliens and we’re Will Smith.”
She recently sat down with AJPlus to share her experience.
Take three minutes and listen – we promise it’s worth your time.
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