Update: On Twitter, Joe clarifies through Time Magazine that McChrystal offered to resign. Hasn’t actually tendered his resignation.

The interesting thing here is that there are no real policy disagreements among the Obama foreign policy players. By all accounts, they’ve been getting along just fine. But the Jones and Clinton moves may indicate some pre-emptive skittishness, a sense of–unjustified, I believe–insecurity on the part of the two principals.

And then the rest of Joe’s post doesn’t have a thing to do with policy, either. It’s not that personality clashes are unimportant. But after eight years of a foreign policy team that really did cleave along broad and deep and well-rehearsed arguments over what a wise and effective foreign policy ought to include, it’s tempting to superimpose that journalistic template over to the current administration.

Yesterday we saw John McCain severely misrepresent what the impending U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) says, incorrectly insisting that its date-certain deadlines for U.S. troop withdrawals are based on “conditions” on the ground. Here Klein asks Obama to revisit his 2007 questions to Gen. David Petraeus about whether conditions in Iraq are good enough to merit withdrawal. His answer appears to entail something big:

[OBAMA]  I don’t think it’s quite good enough yet because I think we have to do a little more training. We’ve got to build up the logistical capacity. I think the possibilities of ethnic strife breaking out again are still present, precisely because the political system has not stabilized itself yet. But I do believe that we are at a point now where we can start drawing down troops. I think we can time a process where the drawing down of troops [IS] parallel to building up the capacity in Iraq and the SOFA agreement that…was just put forward I think reflects that reality.

That sounds like he’s on board with the 2011 deadline for total withdrawal. Obama’s campaign proposal is, of course, to withdraw combat forces by mid-2010. He’s long advocated a residual force for the purposes of (mostly) training the Iraqi security forces. But if he’s on board with the SOFA, then we’re out — all out, adviser/trainer forces and everything — by Dec. 31, 2011. There’s a provision in Article 25 section 5 of the SOFA allowing the Iraqi government “to ask the U.S. government to keep specific forces for the purposes of training and support of the Iraqi security forces” if 2011 is too soon to stop the training mission, but that would require another “special agreement” negotiation with the Iraqis on a new deadline. If Obama is, in fact,  embracing the SOFA, then for the first time from him we’d get a deadline for complete, not partial, withdrawal from Iraq.

There’s a lot to sift through, particularly from a foreign-policy perspective. But check out Obama’s account of his July meeting in Baghdad with Gen. David Petraeus, now head of U.S. Central Command and with whom a prospective President Obama will have to work. Klein asks Obama why he didn’t back away from his 16-month plan to remove combat troops from Iraq despite Petraeus’ objections.

He made the case for maximum flexibility, and I said, you know what, if I were in your shoes, I would be making the exact same argument because your job right now is to succeed in Iraq on as favorable terms as we can get. My job as a potential commander in chief is to view your counsel and your interests through the prism of our overall national security –  which includes what is happening in Afghanistan; which includes the costs to our image in the Middle East [from] the continued occupation; which includes the financial costs of our occupation; which includes what it is doing to our military. So I said, look, I described in my mind an analogous situation where…he has to deal with situations where the commanding officer in [inaudible] says, I need more troops here now because I really think I can make progress doing x, y and z. That commanding officer is doing his job in Ramadi, but Petraeus’s job is to step back and see how does it impact Iraq as a whole. My argument was I have got to do the same thing here. And based on my strong assessment, particularly having just come from Afghanistan, we’re going to have to make a different decision.

That, I’d say, tells a fair amount about how Obama would govern. He deals with a serious policy difference with Petraeus, and does it head on, without equivocation or euphemism. And he seems to have done so respectfully:

I felt it necessary to make that point even though I tried not to talk about it publicly, not knowing sort of what the terms of our discussion were. Precisely because I respect the Petraeus and [inaudible], precisely because they’ve done a good job and because my job as a candidate is preparing myself to be commander in chief.

Put that on a bumper sticker (or at least an Internet meme): RESPECT THE PETRAEUS!