America deserves credit for its decision to publish a report into the CIA’s use of torture following the 9/11 disaster. Despite redaction, the Senate’s intelligence committee confirms what has long been known, that 20 “enhanced” interrogation methods were authorised by the Bush White House. Less well known is that 54 other countries, including British territories, were induced to collaborate. Despite former members of the Bush administration declaring that torturers are “patriots”, and the usual nonsense that “lives could be put at danger” from the truth, the Senate has bravely spoken.

Less creditable is what the report apparently says. The US in the aftermath of 9/11 displayed a collective psychosis of fear and paranoia. What had been overwhelming world sympathy – Yasser Arafat gave blood for New Yorkers – turned to aversion and then hatred as revenge wars were waged on Afghanistan and Iraq. Defence turned to belligerence – and torture. The Senate report is sceptical whether any useful intelligence was gained thereby.

Theorists of torture have long debated whether a higher good – “national security” – can justify the lesser evil. Torture is in the same category as the bombing of populated places from the air. The agony is certain, the gain speculative. That is why civilised states no longer execute, torture or mutilate their citizens, whatever the possible justification. They acknowledge that civilisation is a matter of means as well as ends. The UN outlawed torture in 1975.

Yet no area of government is so enveloped in secrecy and hypocrisy. The British government lectures the world on civil and human rights, but has yet to account for the use of torture – water-boarding and other methods – in Northern Ireland. Its blanket secrecy for “national security” extends to surveillance, rendition, hacking and drone targeting. Its use of “trusties” in parliament as a fig-leaf for accountability and its meek collaboration with Washington in all things must leave it vulnerable to suspicion of complicity with the CIA.

Nations everywhere react badly to trouble. They do so the more recklessly the longer the trouble is perceived as lasting. That is the poison of the “war on terror”, that it keeps people perpetually in thrall to the security state.

Democracy’s only defence is to demand that account be subsequently rendered.

Citizens must know what is done in their name, even if it takes time. It has taken the US more than a decade. Britain is still waiting for its Chilcot report on Iraq.