Leslie Simon and Marc Bender had arrived in Havana for a 10-day holiday, despite their president’s repeated threats of military action against Cuba . The two retired union lawyers from Los Angeles flew in via Miami sporting badges reading “ICE OUT!” and shared a somewhat negative opinion of the US’s past. “The history of America is a fucking abomination,” said Bender, ordering a Cristal, the Cuban lager. They were more positive about Cuba. “We’ve been once before and we saw some things,” said Bender. “We love Cuba.” Simon, 67, and Bender, 70, are rare tourists in a time of extreme stress. On Friday, Donald Trump extended already intense sanctions on the island, targeting foreign companies doing business with Havana. He also threatened to place the US’s huge aircraft carrier, the Abraham Lincoln, “100 yards offshore”. For the last two weeks, US surveillance aircraft have been circling the island, in an echo of what happened in Venezuela before the 3 January abduction of Nicolás Maduro.…