No, the COVID-19 crisis is still not the same as the 2003 WMD-narrative in Iraq

For the most part, arguing with anti-science pandemic denialists is futile and tantamount to getting embroiled into arguments with the Flat Earth Society over astrology; both conspiratorial camps are psychotic and try too hard to see patterns where there are none to be found, and are completely out of touch with reality. But every once in a while, one of their most egregious claims will resurface and it is hard to ignore because of the sheer absurdity. Cranks on the internet, who clearly never worked a day in their lives and have suddenly become "health experts" overnight, still like to compare the current COVID-19 crisis (which, in their minds, is a "grand hoax" planned by some "secret cabal") to the "Weapons of Mass Destruction"-pretext used to justify the direct U.S.-UK military invasion of Iraq in 2003. It is quite clear that people such as these have no real grasp or understanding, ergo no real principled stance, of imperialism which is primarily an economic phenomenon. They've consistently revealed themselves to be nothing more than Ron Paul anti-interventionist libertarian edgelords who are contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, who haven't outgrown the adolescent way of looking at 'authority', and who only oppose certain things and events they perceive as exotic-sounding because they're outside of the mainstream or whatever is deemed 'socially acceptable'. They also have the habit of giving themselves a pat on the back when acting as if they are privy to some kind of "special", "hidden", "shadowy secret cabal", "deep state", "insider" information or knowledge that the 'Average Joe' knows nothing about because the aforementioned 'Average Joe' is just too much of a "sheeple" according to their condescending, cabal-obsessed minds. 

More importantly, however, they will always fail to answer to the questions, "to what end?" and "what do they stand to gain from it?" when it comes to notion that neoliberal governments and Western mainstream media are all "in on it" and are supposedly lying about the existence and/or severity of a virus. As I have already explained in a previous post, they lied about the WMD's in Iraq in order to justify the invasion because there was a literal profit to be made from the imperialist plunder; and with a pretext such as that, the more legitimate-looking their cause is in the public eye. The bottom line is that the end goal there was to protect Wall Street's profits while killing the competition or challenge (Iraq) to U.S. hegemony and its global monopoly. And there is no need to rely on highly convoluted narratives plagued with intrigue, which sound like they were ripped straight from the pages of the most contrived dystopian fantasy novel, in order to explain such historical events and phenomena -- especially when one all needs to do is to follow the trends and developments in U.S. foreign policy. 

Yes, it is true that the mainstream media does lie; but, one needs to keep in mind that, under capitalism, such lies are profit-driven and that notions of "freedom of the press" under such a system are inherently contradictory, as Lenin once said: “‘Freedom of the press’ in bourgeois society means freedom for the rich systematically, unremittingly, daily, in millions of copies, to deceive, corrupt and fool the exploited and oppressed mass of the people, the poor.” With those contradictions in mind, it does indeed matter as to which stories the capitalist class wants the mainstream media to lie about, namely if there are profits to be made or if there are profits that are at stake. 

Now, zoonotic viruses, on the other hand have always been beyond even the capitalist class' control, most of whom are always ill-equipped to deal with them whenever epidemics or pandemics happen. It should go without saying that they are materially real unlike the WMD's. Also unlike the WMD-narrative, severe viral outbreaks have the ability to wreak real havoc on the economies of all nations and all governments, even neoliberal ones, especially when they are allowed to run wildly out of control and decimate entire populations. Quite frankly, lying about the existence and/or severity of a virus is not a very beneficial "narrative" for Western governments, unlike the one about "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq. Lying about the existence and/or severity is tantamount to lying about the weather, none of which will help to turn a profit and none of which have any room for plausible deniability because there is no coherent end goal. The WMD-narrative, on the other hand, provided the plausible deniability that U.S. foreign policy needed because it gave the 2003 invasion the veneer of "humanitarianism," "self-defense," and "bringing democracy" so that Washington does not have to outright say to the public that they were invading Iraq to "eliminate a threat to the profits of US petroleum corporations posed by Arab nationalists." Not only that, but as much as possible Western governments in general do not want social unrest in their own home soil, even as they do sponsor terrorism abroad, because they do not want to hurt their profits. 

Of course, countries such as the United States and Brazil under Bolsonaro are, shall we say, "special cases," given the way that their respective leaderships continue to downplay the seriousness of the pandemic, with cases skyrocketing each day, as well as consistently defying and undermining medical health officials for the sake of trying to save their political image and reputations. The United States in particular is being crushed by the curve and, ironically, is doing a lot more harm to its economy than as hoped for when many states have re-opened prematurely in the hopes of "restarting the economy early" -- nevermind the fact that they were not even close to exiting the crisis or seeing a significant dip in COVID-19 cases. But, I digress.

Generally speaking, of course neoliberal governments do not care about you as a person; that is stating the obvious. However, and speaking from a purely economic standpoint, they do care about the economy and do not want it to suffer greatly in the long run -- and it is guaranteed to do so if the spread is not brought under control and millions of people die or suffer from the long-term complications from the virus (which could permanently put them out of any job prospect). With the economy suffering that greatly (and putting Artificial Intelligence aside), there will be no human labour to exploit and no consumers to buy products, which will hurt profits. Not to mention, countries such as Canada and Australia which have universal healthcare do not want to have to spend millions on hospitals if such places were to become extremely overwhelmed. Hospitals becoming overwhelmed will require that much more money, but not if people are taking the cost-effective measures -- such as wearing masks, physical distancing, frequent hand washing, and staying home as much as possible -- which do help to prevent such scenario from happening. Hence why there is no profit to be made from lying about a virus, unlike the "humanitarian" pretext of WMD's in Iraq. 

In response to the question, "to what end?" American pandemic denialists in particular will almost always give an incoherent answer that involves some kind of convoluted, high jinks plot, such as: "The COVID is a Democrat conspiracy to take over the world!" or the WHO, Dr. Fauci, the CDC, etc, are  "inflating this worse than it is simply to get at Trump because Trump is the biggest victim that's ever walked the on the face of the planet." They would also say it's a secret plot to get everyone to give up their "freedoms" and civil liberties, so that they can get on board with mass surveillance by agreeing to "vaccine-injected microchips" and to contact tracing. And the list goes on. Nevermind the fact that social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, and the NSA are much more efficient in mass spying -- even moreso than the old-fashioned wire-tapping. Or the fact that contact tracing is not an act of spying, and has existed well before the common usage of smartphones; it is the simple procedure, upon diagnosis, of telling your doctor where have you been and who have you been in close contact with recently so that warnings could be issued to persons you may have unintentionally infected. But, that's another topic altogether.

Whatever the case is, each of the asserted beliefs listed above -- as well as the faulty comparison if not outright false equivalence fallacy of equating the media sensationalism surrounding the WMD-narrative used against Iraq with the supposed "socially-engineered mass panic and hysteria" over a "mythical virus" -- seem to be positing that the American Empire is conspiring, paying to destabilizing, and lead a regime-change operation against itself....

The United States has more to gain in terms of profits in funding chaos and terrorism abroad, in places such as Venezuela, Syria, and Hong Kong. Again, it has nothing to gain from domestic disturbances and therefore has no reason to destabilize itself. And as much as possible, Wall Street does want "social peace" within the domestic sphere in the imperialist core because domestic disturbances do actually hurt its profits as already mentioned above. Although there are divisions and growing tensions between the ruling elite, with Donald Trump being a very divisive and disruptive figure, it does not mean that Trump is "anti-establishment" or anti-imperialist by any stretch; he hasn't "drained the swamp", nor has he ended overseas adventurism considering that he expanded it and continued from where his Democrat predecessor, Barack Obama, left off. The only reason that some members of the ruling class are opposed to Trump is because of his incompetence and "bull-in-a-China-shop" approach in enforcing U.S. foreign policy. This opposition to Trump from some sections of the U.S. ruling class has pre-existed well before news about COVID-19 first broke out; not only that, but it was actually China, a target of U.S. foreign policy, to first publicly report cases about a new Coronavirus outbreak, not the Democrats (that would be giving the Democrats, who are as equally opposed to public healthcare as the Republicans, too much credit). 

Planning smear campaigns against nations that are opposed to U.S. interests in order to help ramp up an impending military invasion is far easier than planning a "great pandemic hoax". And because the then-Ba'athist Iraq was a far-away country that had long existed independently outside of U.S. imperialism's orbit and was heavily embargoed, it was all the more easy to create pretexts for war using orientalist depictions of the nation -- yet another example of the "out of sight, out of mind"-mentality of the capitalist class. None of these patterns and symptoms associated with U.S. foreign policy can be applied to viruses because these microscopic, infective and parasitic agents are naturally occurring phenomena that, in and of themselves, exist beyond the control of any institution or society. With that in mind, here is a useful reminder from Lenin with regards to imperialism:

(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopoly capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.

The capitalists own the means of production; no one owns the reproductive capacity of a virus. And lying about nations that are routinely demonized and targeted by U.S. foreign policy is just a means of carrying out imperialist aggression and a means of reaching those profit-making goals. It is a means to an end, in short. In contrast, lying about the existence and/or the severity of a virus, especially one that is already proving to be worse than the flu, serves no purpose and no end. 

If wearing one mask for 15 minutes or less is "going to kill you" and "kill [your] freedoms," please try telling that sob story with a straight face to Iraqi women who gave birth to children with severe birth defects thanks to the hazardous impacts of depleted uranium from the 2003 bombings. Or better yet, try reciting those sob stories in front of the graves of the 500,000 Iraqi children killed by U.S. sanctions in the years (the 1990's) leading up to the 2003 invasion.