America should not support the United Nations because it is unproductive

I'm sure your claims are well-meant, but this is all rather amusing. Now you are rounding up a bunch of FOX news and Wikipedia articles, calling it research, and passing it off as an argument – once more, just regurgitating the 90-10 mistake. Due to obvious space limits, I cannot respond to every allegation of corruption against the United Nations, and you seem to have endlessly scoured Google for them, but I will comment on some of the major ones. Before I do that, however, I want to take the opportunity to remind you that you have ignored most of my points regarding the achievements of the UN. In fact, your last response is merely a mundane listing of UN corruption scandals. Your conceptions of the organization seem muddled by these corruption charges; it's like you have nothing else: you apparently think a major international institution like this can simply abjure controversy at a whim! I wish we all had such wonderful dreams. As stated before, the United Nations tries to foster an environment of dialogue and cooperation. For this framework to be successful, the UN needs to be inclusive. It must not thumb its nose at opponents of the United States just because we don't like them; that will only incite animosity and exacerbate tensions at a time when primarily we need resolution. Please do not make the mistake of thinking that the UN rewards the governments of these countries through these appointments; the UN is just trying to elevate the status of these nations in the eyes of the world. Again: trying to elevate the profile of these nations, not of their administrations. The administrations themselves may be horrible and brutal, as you put it, but that does not mean we should isolate or be intolerant of these countries. You mention funding by the United States again, quite surprisingly. I already explained the twist behind this (read above): once you adjust for standard of living and GDP disparities, American aid to the United Nations seems exiguous; most other major industrialized nations give disproportionately more to the UN than the US does. The suggestion that the UN hurts American "security, values, and interests" is largely groundless. The following Government Accountability Office report (you can find it here: http://www.gao.gov...), which compares cost-effectiveness in UN and US military operations, is a microcosm of my point. The report, analyzing actual UN and hypothetical US operations in Haiti, estimates that "it would cost the United States about twice as much as the United Nations to conduct a peacekeeping operation similar to MINUSTAH." The GAO report also recounts the touchstones for successful nation building: "multinational participation, extensive experience, and structure," all qualities that it argues the UN possesses. Moreover, the GAO report cites a 2005 study by the Rand Corporation about UN peacekeeping. The GAO describes the Rand study as saying that "the UN may have the ability to compensate for its relatively small military presence with its reputation of international legitimacy and local impartiality," advantages that elude the US. The GAO goes on to claim that "the UN has developed a cadre of senior officials that has gained experience with peacekeeping and nation building activities over many missions." I won't let you derive your own conclusions from this report; the whole point is what I've been arguing all along: the UN can do some things better than the US. The struggle over defining terrorism has political dimensions. Not every part of the world believes in the ‘War on Terror' conducted by the United States, and even if they agree with the larger points, there are still disagreements on specifics. For example, all this time in the ‘War on Terror' and the European Union has not considered Hezbollah a terrorist organization, whereas obviously the US has. Generally, the UN is committed to defeating terrorism. The 90-10 rule strikes again. Out of everything I have mentioned, however, nothing better exemplifies your repeated 90-10 gaffe than your statements about the United Nations Development Program. I don't know if this is your methodology for debate, but you sure do use it a lot. Here you are talking about procurement fraud somewhere in Africa worth $8 million when the organization channeled $4.3 billion globally in 2006. The other investigations of fraud and mismanagement for 2006, which actually amount to a very significant figure of around $1.9 billion, were largely caused by mendacious and manipulative corporations who try and cheat the UN out of its money. Much of this ‘fraud,' ‘mismanagement,' or ‘corruption,' call it what you will, arises from sources extrinsic to the UN. Undoubtedly though, a significant part comes from the UN itself, which is something the organization easily recognizes and is trying to fix. By and large, however, the UN operates effectively. Not perfectly, but effectively, and when you have such a titanic institution, that's all you can really hope for. I am also skeptical with some of these "leaked reports" of yours. I am a little peeved that you don't cite your sources; I have managed to track down a majority of your allegations to specific sources, but the rest are a tad sketchy. I have now responded to a rather satisfactory number of complaints raised against the United Nations. As I said in the beginning, I could not cover everything because of space restrictions and a combination of opaque and prevaricating sources used by my opponent. Let's now look at what the heart of this debate is about. My opponent essentially argued that the UN is "unproductive." Look at what he employed to construct his argument: a bunch of isolated examples meant to characterize the whole of this complex organization. His methodology came just shy of what anecdotal logical fallacies typically look like, but that methodology is perfectly covered under the 90-10 rule: use the ten percent to describe the ninety percent. If you don't like the vast majority of the facts, just twist a few of them to fit into your preconceived notion of the world - this was my opponent's modus operandi in the debate. My opponent completely flouted the major successes of the United Nations, especially with the decolonization process in Africa. He not once recognized the millions of people that are alive today because of help they received from the UN. Nor did he acknowledge the major diplomatic and peacekeeping achievements of the UN, achievements that run back for decades and that have fundamentally shaped our world in that time, mostly for the better. Beyond all these shoddy facts and arguments, my opponent has also offered an entirely unreasonable proposition, one with which most diplomats readily disagree. The sentiment that the United States can just stop supporting the UN and leave borders on the irrational. It is not a viable option for our country at all; we would be the laughingstock of the world if we did something as disgusting and shameful as to drop out of the world's pre-eminent organization for the regulation of global affairs. Yet that irrational and largely sentimental conclusion (merely refer to the first post, where my opponent uses emotion just as much as reason) is precisely what my opponent champions. With so much responsibility riding on America's shoulders, however, these are not the times for panic and irrationality. We need to tackle these big problems by both working with other nations and establishing our own initiatives. Only then can we have a successful foreign policy and a prosperous world.