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This week in the archives: Oct. 23, 1985
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Written by [no author name found]
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Senate debates Wallop Amendment and South African sanctions
By Cordell Smith
Another election year has arrived. As always, election season provides high grade entertainment as the candidates, in their appeal to the voters, stoop to various forms of hypocrisy.
Such was the case with the United States Senate during the debate over the recently-passed sanctions against South Africa, as hypocrisy reached scandalous proportions.
The alleged purpose of these sanctions is to express America’s distaste for the South African policy of aparthied, or racial separation. The Congress as a whole denounced apartheid, or racial separation. The Congress as a whole denounced apartheid (which certainly deserves denouncing), but managed to be strangely selective with its moral outrage by directing its venom only at pro-Western South Africa, while remaining silent about the slave-states of the Communist bloc.
In an effort to even the score a bit, Senator Malcom Wallop (R-Wyoming) introduced, on Aug. 15, an amendment (#2750) which intended to apply the sanctions of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 equally against the USSR as against South Africa.
Such an amendment certainly was not appropriate. South Africa, after all, has not expressed open hostility to the United States, has not established apartheid regimes in Cuba or Nicaragua, does not have nuclear missiles aimed at our soil, and has not shot down a single Korean airliner. The Soviet Union, however, has done all manner of hostile acts against the United Sataes, and has stated its intent to destroy the U.S. on so many occasions that only the willfully blind and deaf could ignore it. Accordingly, if the Senate intended to punish pro-Western South Africa, it should also-with stronger reason-vote sanctions against the openly hostile USSR.
The Senate, however, did not see it this way, and defeated the Wallop amendment by a vote of 41 to 57. Afterward, the Senate adopted the position of the Double Standard, by voting 84 to 14 in favor of the sanctions bill. On Sept. 26, Reagan vetoed the sanctions bill (HR 4868). The following Monday, on September 29, the House of Representatives chose to override the President’s veto, 313 to 83. That the house would do this was a foregone conclusion. Attention then turned again to the Senate.
In any case the Senate overrode the President’s veto by a vote of 78 to 21.
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