Kim
We will have to agree to disagree. I have no doubt whatsoever that Mr Nott has great talents as a trauma surgeon and that he took personal risks to go to Syria. I have been following the Syrian war, a proxy war in which the west supported rebels which were intermingled with Al Qaeda and still are. These efforts were supported by Saudi Arabia and Turkey and there are many documented atrocities by these ‘rebels’. It is one thing to volunteer to work in a war zone but as you well know and recognise, you must never be partisan if you do so.
My point is his partisan views and advocacy of military intervention by our Government in the civil war in Syria. It is not the place of a medical volunteer to make the statement that ‘Assad must go’.There is no doubt that Mr Nott is well intentioned having seen the horrors of this and other wars first hand. However the article he penned for the Guardian linked above takes the view that all of the blame in this civil war goes to the Syrian government which is an opinion and not fact. Moreover he advocates the use of a no-fly zone and uses expressions that are in my views biased towards the rebels who are a major part of the conflict.
Moreover Mr Nott glosses over some facts and I would particularly like to draw attention to his statement:
“I packed my gas mask and spent six weeks in Aleppo just after that statement in 2013. Aleppo was a very moderate city. The rebel side was controlled by the Free Syrian Army.”
By 2013 the major faction controlling Aleppo was Al Nusra front which is affiliated with the global terrorist organisation Al Qaida. This statement means that Mr Nott did not appear to be aware of the details of who the rebels were, or has chosen not to mention this fact.
Obviously Mr Nott has never operated in the Government controlled part of Aleppo and therefore has not witnessed the equally appalling suffering of children and other civilians in this gruesome civil war and this may be that he was refused entry by the Syrian government. However the nett result is that he is making a partisan judgement and calling for military action, both of which have no place in his capacity as a medical practitioner. In also using a propagandistic approach by using a photo circulated in the internet of a Syrian child that has been a victim of an air raid, and also allowing a photograph of himself dressed in theatre gowns, I believe he brings the profession into disrepute.
The Syrian civil war is a very complex issue and the use of journalistic procedure to sway the public is well practiced by politicians and journalists but should not be done by medical professionals.
Other than the above, Mr Nott appeared in many radio programmes with the same purpose, urging our government to intervene. To you, it may be a call to observe the Geneva conventions but not when it is part of calling for a regime change, as you yourself state. We all know that calling for humanitarian intervention is a code for western intervention for regime change. We have seen it in too many places such as Yugoslavia and more recently in Libya where an well off country has ended as a failed state. So please: Mr Nott is not my hero.