Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, written in the 1920s, blamed Germany’s troubles on capitalism and the Jews and laid out his expansionist program that led to World War II. Now, an intercepted 6,000-word letter from one of Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants has done much the same thing for the worldwide radical Islamic terrorist conspiracy.

American forces in Iraq found the letter last summer. Dated July 9, it was from Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 leader of al-Qaida, believed to be hiding in the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan, to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist group’s top agent in Iraq. The CIA concluded that the letter was genuine and now has released the full text, in Arabic and English.

The document lays out a plan of action starting with “expel the Americans from Iraq” and establishing an Islamic authority to take power and continue the struggle after the Americans leave. The jihad, or holy war, would spread to neighboring countries including an assault on Israel and finally would create an Islamic state extending from Lebanon to Indonesia.

President Bush seized on the letter as an argument against an early withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. He said it showed that al-Qaida “intends to make Iraq a terrorist haven and a staging ground for attacks against other nations including the United States.”

An opposite lesson can be learned by a close reading of the long document. The writer advises his colleague in Iraq that the master plan requires the support of the Muslim masses and that they “do not rally except against an outside occupying enemy, especially if the enemy is firstly Jewish and secondly American.”

He also warns against possible failure to take power quickly after U.S. troops withdraw, saying that al-Qaida must not “repeat the mistake of the Taliban” in failing to bring the Afghan masses into the insurgency in Afghan-istan. In Iraq, he foresees the possibility that the masses will be distracted by the struggle between the Sunnis and the majority Shiites and may not support a takeover by al-Qaida.

Thus, the document can be taken as a disclosure of weakness by the Islamic terrorist conspiracy and an admission of its dependence on continued American occupation as a motivating force for mass support and recruitment.

Far from proving that the United States must stay the course indefinitely, this letter lends support to the recent advice by some top U.S. military leaders that it is time to start planning an American withdrawal. That is, the American presence is not heading toward victory but in some ways is helping the enemy.