‘Sometimes we allow ourselves to be trapped by a certain way of doing things,” President Barack Obama said back on July 1, 2015. But re-opening the US Embassy in Cuba would show “we don’t have to be imprisoned by the past.”

Well, it’s now obvious that Cuba’s government has no desire to break with the past: Several American diplomats (and at least one Canadian) have come home from Havana after losing their hearing — victims of a sonic device placed in or near their Cuban residences.

Raul Castro and his minions deny all responsibility, of course, and it’s not clear that the device was intended to deafen, or was spy technology that malfunctioned.

But there’s no honest reason to expose diplomats, protected under international law, to sound outside the range of human hearing but at such power as to damage their ears, perhaps permanently.

That Havana is letting the FBI investigate merely indicates that all evidence has already been removed.

The sorry affair is yet more proof of Obama’s own deafness to the reality of the Castro regime and other US enemies.