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<\/a>President Barack Obama meets with Cuban President Ra\u00fal Castro at the Summit of the Americas in Panama City, April 11, 2015. (Official White House photo)<\/p><\/div>\n
The United States and Cuba do not have to be enemies. In fact, just 10 years ago, the two countries were normalizing relations. I was in Panama City at the 2015 Summit of the Americas when, to the delight of everyone there, Barack Obama and Ra\u00fal Castro famously shook hands, marking the first substantial public interaction between leaders of the two countries in decades. Obama said, \u201cThe United States is not interested in being prisoners of the past,\u201d while Ra\u00fal Castro thanked Obama for taking steps toward normalization and called him \u201can honest man.\u201d The opening was a win-win for both countries: an influx of U.S. tourists, a flourishing of private businesses, and new openings for civil society. Then came Donald Trump, who sent relations spiraling downward once again.<\/p>\n
Fast forward to today, with the indictment of Ra\u00fal Castro for allegedly ordering the 1996 shootdown of the Brothers to the Rescue planes that left four men dead. I was in Cuba at the time leading a group of U.S. CEOs interested in investing on the island. The next day, we were supposed to meet with Fidel Castro. But after the planes were shot down, the meeting was canceled and the business executives rushed to take the next flight back to Miami.<\/p>\n
It was a tragic and regrettable incident \u2014 not only because of the lives lost, but also because it hardened political attitudes toward Cuba for years to come, paving the way for the codification of the U.S. blockade into law.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s critical to understand the context.<\/p>\n
The group\u2019s leader, Jos\u00e9 Basulto, was a veteran of the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion with a long history of anti-Cuban militancy. He openly admitted, \u201cI was trained as a terrorist by the United States.\u201d The group repeatedly violated Cuban airspace and dropped anti-government leaflets over Havana. Basulto himself declared after one such mission: \u201cWe want confrontation.\u201d Between 1994 and February 1996, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cuban civil aviation authorities documented more than 25 serious and systematic violations of Cuban airspace by aircraft associated with Brothers to the Rescue.<\/p>\n
The Cuban government repeatedly warned Washington, the FAA, and international aviation authorities that these flights were illegal and dangerous. U.S. officials knew the risks. The National Security Archive\u2019s declassified records, published on May 19, 2026, reveal that high-level U.S. officials understood that continued Cuban airspace violations could lead to disaster. An FAA email from January 22, 1996 \u2014 one month before the shootdown \u2014 explicitly warned of the \u201cworst case scenario\u201d that \u201cone of these days the Cubans will shoot down one of these planes.\u201d The same document acknowledged that State Department officials understood the overflights could \u201conly be seen as further taunting of the Cuban Government.\u201d<\/p>\n
On February 23, 1996, White House Cuba adviser Richard Nuccio warned National Security Advisor Sandy Berger that \u201ctensions are sufficiently high within Cuba\u2026 that we fear this may finally tip the Cubans toward an attempt to shoot down or force down the plane.\u201d Yet the FAA refused Nuccio\u2019s request to ground the flights.<\/p>\n
While there is disagreement over whether the planes were ultimately shot down in Cuban or international airspace, the pilots had reportedly filed a false flight plan and again approached Cuban airspace despite direct warnings from Cuban controllers.<\/p>\n
The hypocrisy of indicting Ra\u00fal Castro nearly 30 years later is staggering, given the long history of anti-Cuban extremists operating from U.S. soil to wreak havoc against the island with bombings, sabotage, and airline terrorism. In 1976, terrorists bombed Cubana Flight 455, killing all 73 people onboard, including the entire Cuban national fencing team. In 1997, a 32-year-old Italian tourist was killed in a hotel bombing aimed at destroying Cuba\u2019s tourism industry. Yet men implicated in these horrific acts, including Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, were protected by U.S. authorities and allowed to live freely in Miami.<\/p>\n
And let\u2019s remember: the same U.S. government now pursuing charges against Ra\u00fal Castro has itself been carrying out deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, strikes that have killed at least 193 people since September 2025, with no transparency or due process.<\/p>\n
This new indictment is simply a cynical escalation in the long U.S. effort to force regime change in Cuba. Will Washington try to use it as a pretext to invade the island and \u201cextract\u201d Ra\u00fal Castro, as it did with Nicol\u00e1s Maduro in Venezuela? Will it once again send U.S. troops to occupy Cuba, as it did in 1898, 1906, and 1912? Will it ignite a civil war? We have no idea.<\/p>\n
But we do know this: despite unfounded allegations to the contrary, Cuba poses no threat to the United States. And the United States has absolutely no right \u2014 zero \u2014 to interfere in Cuba\u2019s internal affairs.<\/p>\n
Ra\u00fal Castro is 94 years old. Let him live out his final years in the country where he was born and for which he fought his entire life. Instead of tightening the blockade and pushing Cuba toward greater poverty, instability, migration, and despair, the United States should finally abandon its failed policy of domination, lift the sanctions, and allow Cubans \u2014 not Washington politicians or Miami hardliners \u2014 to decide Cuba\u2019s future.<\/p>\n
The opinions expressed are the opinion of the author, not necessarily Antiwar.com.<\/em><\/p>\n Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of<\/em> CODEPINK for Peace<\/em><\/a>, and the author of several books, including<\/em> Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So apparently the Trump administration has decided that what Cuba really needs right now \u2014 after decades of economic strangulation, CIA assassination attempts, sabotage campaigns, invasions, sanctions, blackouts, shortages, and more than half a century of failed regime-change policy \u2014 is the indictment of 94-year-old revolutionary icon Ra\u00fal Castro. The United States and Cuba do 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