The air traffic control tower looms over the field at the Oakland International Airport, Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2015, in Oakland, Calif. (D. Ross Cameron/Bay Area News Group) ( D. ROSS CAMERON )

The Cuba connection to California will never be as strong as Florida's. As President Barack Obama said in his historic visit to Havana this week, Miami was built by Cubans.

We are, after all, a continent away and have far less immigration from the island nation.

Still, with the opening of diplomatic relations as well as trade and travel ties after more than half a century of verbal bluster and amazingly inept forays such as the CIA's Bay of Pigs invasion, Californians are as curious as the rest of America about the sudden opening.

That's why Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein are right to call on the Federal Aviation Administration to ensure that California airports are included for nonstop flights to Havana when full-scale commercial air travel begins soon.

The senators point out that Los Angeles has the fourth-highest number of residents with Cuban ancestry among the nation's cities.

In the near future, Americans visiting Cuba may become as common as visits to other countries in the Caribbean.

But the opening of tourism is hardly the most important aspect of this new day in American-Cuban relations. The move is a crucial policy shift toward geopolitical realism and away from fantasy-based dogma.

The trade embargo President Dwight Eisenhower put in place and President John F. Kennedy strengthened -- after laying in a huge shipment of Cuban cigars for his own humidors, by the way -- was a good idea at the time. That time was 1962. Now, every other country in the world -- with the exception of Israel, Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands, all of which have their own reasons for currying favor with Washington -- disagrees with the embargo. Congress should vote to end it.


As far back as 2008 about 61 percent Americans surveyed told a USA Today-Gallup poll that diplomatic relations should be restarted with Cuba.

Having such relations does not mean we condone or excuse the horrific restrictions on free speech, free enterprise and the freedom of its own people to travel that the Cuban dictatorship imposes on Cubans. But we don't agree with the repressive governments of China or Russia, either, yet we are free to engage with their countries.

When a diplomatic and economic tactic fails to produce the intended results after more than 50 years, it's time to change course.

Obama didn't shy from confronting the Castro regime's repression on his trip; the island's future "depends on the free and open exchange of ideas," he said in his address to the nation.

After decades of isolation from our neighbor, how good it is to be a part of a new era that we hope will lead to more freedoms for its people.