Lefty Narrative: Rapes, Torture at 'Iran's Guantanamo'

by: warner todd huston | published: 01 05, 2010

A left wing narrative has for some time been developing centered on abuse of Iran's democratic demonstrators at the hands of Iranian officials. You may have seen the shocking news about forced rapes and torture of Iranians imprisoned by the Mullahs in Iran but it is how the story is being sold to the west that is of note here. The prison story is being called "Iran's Guantanamo" and it is being sold as if it is explicitly true that Iran has acted in the same way as U.S. officials have acted at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba detainee facility.

Conflating Guantanamo with the sort of criminal actions perpetrated by the Iranian government is simply the wrong message to send, but it is one that the media loves to see pushed just the same. This way of selling the story is just another example of the anti-American narrative that the left loves to slyly push under everyone's nose.

As the story goes, the totalitarian government in Iran has been grabbing up off the streets people that merely want to see democracy come to their beleaguered nation. Afterward, in Iran's Evin prison, the Mullah oppressors have imprisoned these innocents, tortured them, raped them, and beat them, with many dying as a result of the abuse. And how has the news been selling the story? By equating these illicit, monstrous actions of the Iranian government to America as if the two are morally indistinguishable.

On Dec. 7, NPR's radio show All Things Considered featured a report by Bahman Kalbasi, the Washington correspondent for the BBC Persian Services. Kalbasi again pushed the "Iran's Guantanamo" story line in the interview.

In August, a New York Times The Lede Blog piece headlined "An Account of ‘the Iranian Guantanamo’" reported the details the horrific treatment that prisoners received at the hands of Iranian "policemen." It details prisoners being detained for days, beaten to death and otherwise mistreated. Once again The Lede equates Iran’s actions to a “Guantanamo” styled imprisonment.

For some other examples, the Huffington Post pushed the theme when news came out that some of the Iranians that were imprisoned had American citizenship and the Boston Globe also pushed the "Iran's Guantanamo" theme, earlier in the year.

While the tyrannical actions of the Iranian Mullahs need a wide, wide audience, selling this tale using the "Iran's Guantanamo" tagline is illegitimate. The actions of Iranian authorities at the Evin prison (and other sites) is in no way equivalent to any actions of the U.S. military at the Guantanamo Bay facility.

At the hands of U.S. authorities, no one has been raped in Guantanamo. No one has been beaten to death. No one has been held without the slightest attempt to legally justify the detainment. Whether you agree with the U.S. Government's justification for the existence of the facility in Cuba or not, you simply cannot say that the U.S. Government has made no attempt to justify the facility based on legal reasoning.

On the other hand, the actions of the Iranian authorities have been brutal, oppressive, tyrannical and downright evil. Further, their victims are truly innocent. Unlike the battlefield found terrorists held in Guantanamo, all those that were gathered up and abused by Iran were simply trying to make their lives better by attempting to usher in a new age of democracy in their ancient Persian nation.

It is simply illegitimate to report these criminals in Iran by calling the story "Iran's Guantanamo." It detracts from the oppressive and illegitimate actions of Iran and refocuses international ire back on America by using the word "Guantanamo" in reportage of this incident. But it is no surprise that the western media love to see the conflation of Iran's lawless, murderous Mullahs to America.

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