Spot on. There is one standard for the empire and its allies, and one for its enemies. Perhaps worth mentioning that several years after this speech, the US shot down an Iranian airliner. Reagan argued that this was completely unlike the Korean case about which he had made a big deal - even though the Iranian plane was flying over international waters, while the Korean airliner was in USSR airspace.
Spot on. There is one standard for the empire and its allies, and one for its enemies. Perhaps worth mentioning that several years after this speech, the US shot down an Iranian airliner. Reagan argued that this was completely unlike the Korean case about which he had made a big deal - even though the Iranian plane was flying over international waters, while the Korean airliner was in USSR airspace.