Her name is Amaryllis Fox. She used to be a real live secret agent. She worked undercover with the CIA for almost 10 years.
While she was a graduate student at Georgetown University, she helped to develop an algorithm to predict terrorist activity.
Amaryllis Fox left the CIA to become an author and a peace activist. When she gives a speech about how to overcome terrorism, she knows what she is talking about.
BuzzFeed reports that Fox made a short video about what she learned. It was posted on Facebook by AJ+, and it’s gone viral.
Amaryllis Fox tells her listeners the key lesson she learned through her work was this:
“Everybody believes they are the good guy.”
The video is simple, and incredibly powerful. In it, the former CIA agent provides what she truly believes is the secret to ending terrorism and war.
Some of the quotes from the video are moving because they are so simple, and so human. For example, Fox says:
“I think the question we need to be asking as Americans examining our foreign policy, is whether or not we’re throwing kerosene on a candle. The only real way to disarm your enemy is to listen to them.”
Fox also tells the story of one Al Qaeda operative she spoke to during a debriefing. He talked to her about how the world views the United States. She quoted him as saying:
“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 are Will Smith.”
Fascinating idea.
The best quote came at the end, though. When she talked about how average Syrians or Afghans view the U.S. and how Americans view the Muslim world, she said that so much of what we all think is vastly “oversimplified.”
“Those are stories manufactured by a really small number of people on both sides who amass a great deal of power and wealth by convincing the rest of us to keep killing each other.”
Please watch this video. Please share it. Please take it to heart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnEKEfkdrOU
Featured Image A Screenshot Of AdeleLive Video Via YouTube.
