I think that's an overly simplistic view of Haskell's feature set. For example, garbage collection can be thought as a "big C function implemented as a library

I think that's an overly simplistic view of Haskell's feature set. For example, garbage collection can be thought as a "big C function implemented as a library." C++'s smart pointers and templates can be thought as libraries, but that doesn't detract from their value as programming language features. Your argument is a derivative of "in the end everything is glorified assembly."