In a lecture this week, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller criticised George Bush and his administration for torture of terror suspects. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Getty Images

Vikram Dodd's elegant destruction of Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller's evasions over the torture by US intelligence of terrorist suspects should be the last word on whether our spooks knew about it or not. But there is another nagging question that is more difficult to answer and in a way more disturbing. Why did our senior intelligence officials not take a firmer stand? Could they not anticipate the damage it would do to the reputation of the intelligence services, particularly among our large Muslim minority? Keeping their loyalty, I would assume, is the key aim of our counter-terror strategy.

It is especially odd given that the formative years of just about every top official at Albert Embankment were spent pursuing the IRA – within the law and under a strict set of political riding instructions. It was a cardinal principle of both intelligence and military operations that the key to neutering the IRA was to undermine support for its message and methods among potential future sympathisers. That is part of the reason why IRA suspects were treated just like any other suspected criminals and subject only to routine police questioning. Most remained silent. However, in the long term our subtle approach worked enhancing the flow of actionable intelligence.

Ironically, the intelligence relationship with the Americans so dominant in every other sphere played very little part in helping us. The 1992 film Patriot Games, in which CIA analyst Jack Ryan (played by Harrison Ford) takes on the IRA, is pure fantasy.Ted Kennedy's view that the British were colonial oppressors in Northern Ireland ruled the roost in Washington. But at least this allowed us to deal with the problem using our own analysis and judgment. All this appears to have counted for nothing as the penny began to drop with MI5 in 2002 that the US-led war on terror was as much about old-fashioned vengeance as prevention.

To understand why seasoned British counter-terror professionals allowed so much experience to be negated so quickly, you have to understand the seductive power of the intelligence alliance with the Americans. It's not that our spooks are dazzled by their competence or particularly impressed by their vast resources. In private many are dismissive of both American intelligence practice and American culture – indeed Manningham-Buller was pretty rude about both in her lecture. Many of them despised George Bush and the shine is off Barack Obama particularly since his administration equivocated over the Falklands.

But the Americans offer something that few of them can refuse – the chance to play on the world stage, to relive the glory days when Britain really was a power to be reckoned with. By sharing everything we have with the Americans, by doing what Washington says every time without question, we win the right to an upgrade. We can postpone for a few more precious years the move to economy class where we really belong. The Foreign Office shorthand for this is "punching above our weight" – a phrase as filled with fantasy and wishful thinking as "Saddam's WMD".

But the price is high. The torture scandal has shown clearly that we are too polite, deferential or powerless to stop US interests trumping our own. The British intelligence services have achieved a great deal in keeping us safe in recent years, but because of their close relationship with a foreign country, the United States of America, they are often unable to pursue the British national interest. In effect, they have allowed themselves to become non-domiciled.