Violence, including terrorism, against Cuba has long been tolerated in Washington; Cuba’s response to it has not. That double standard is once again on full display as the Trump administration moves to indict former Cuban President Raúl Castro for the shootdown of two planes thirty years ago — even as the US military regularly blows up boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing nearly 200 people with impunity.

The 1996 downing of two Cessnas belonging to the Miami-based group Brothers to the Rescue was not a sudden or contextless act. It followed repeated provocations and incursions, numerous warnings, and the US government’s refusal to restrain a political group openly seeking confrontation.

Presented in Miami and Washington as a long-overdue pursuit of accountability for the deaths of four men, the pending indictment rests on a familiar foundation: selective outrage, historical amnesia, and legal exceptionalism.