GEORGE W Bush has called for the free world to join forces to defeat terrorism.

Britain should join that crusade. Britain should also do all it can to help bring those responsible for Tuesday's outrages to justice.

But justice is different from revenge and retribution.

Prince Charles put it quite eloquently yesterday: ''I remember so well when Lord Mountbatten was blown up on a boat. Like all these things, you just wanted to rush around doing all sorts of things, but you have to be careful.''

He said: "There's a great deal of need for cool heads."

It was reassuring yesterday to hear the cool head of Secretary of State Colin Powell talking. He accepted that Americans wanted a "comprehensive response", but he said: "We have to build the case first."

It is good that President Bush - a man who once boasted that he could sign the death warrants for his own citizens at the rate of one every four minutes - has such sensible voices advising him.

Justice will not mean flying down runways and destroying baby milk, aspirin or furniture factories in Middle Eastern countries which have no connection with Tuesday's attack.

In fact, repeating such past mistakes will only reduce America to the level of the barbarians who attacked the World Trade Centre. It will just be another example of hate boiling over into violence - and surely we've already seen enough of that in New York and Washington without replicating it elsewhere on our planet.

It will just create more reasons for America to be hated, which, in turn, will only increase the chances of more terrorist outrages, of more Americans dying.

This doesn't mean America should be wishy-washy in its response. Indeed, once it has built its case, we urge it to be as decisive as possible - it could be argued that many of today's problems stem from a past indecisiveness which has allowed men like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden to live to fight another day.

If Mr Bush has a cool enough head to stay his hand and build his case, he has the chance to do all corners of the earth a service by ridding it of a fundamentalist element that kills innocent Americans and destroys the credibility of the God it claims to worship.