DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Call it chutzpah, but Senator Clinton’s objection to the Dubai Ports World deal is astounding given that her husband, President Bill Clinton, is pretty much on Dubai’s payroll.

Scores of news commentators, not to mention the general public in the Arab Gulf countries, reacted to the junior senator from New York’s posturing over the Dubai’s purchase of a maritime port management company with amazement, seeing it as both disingenuous and galling.

Over the past three years, the former president has been a regular visitor to this wealthy city state, a hybrid of Las Vegas and Disneyland ruled by one of the most progressive potentates of the region, Sheik Mohammed bin-Rashid al-Maktoum.

On average, Mr. Clinton visits Dubai twice a year to give his standard 20 minute off-the-cuff lectures at conferences staged largely around him, and collect his fee of $500,000 a visit. Amenities include flying private jets and staying in some of the most sumptuous hotels of the Middle East. He is reckoned by financial folks around here to have made between $3 million and $4 million, if not more, as he doubles as an adviser of sorts to Sheik Mohammed. He has done similar sweeps in Saudi Arabia.

The covenant in this kind of work is for Mr. Clinton to get rich in return for lending his reputation and influence to facilitate Dubai’s emergence as a global player expanding its wealth through cross-continent acquisitions – with minimal objections, especially from his spouse.

Buying influence is an ancient and honored Arab custom, emanating from the way business is done at home. It was therefore with considerable shock that most Arabs watched the firestorm in the Senate, Congress, and other American quarters that greeted Dubai’s move to purchase Britain’s P&O for $ 6.8 billion, amid accusations that it would threaten national security and facilitate Arab terror attacks against America.

Virtually every Arab press outlet from the viciously anti-American Al Jazeera satellite television network of Qatar to Egypt’s friendly Al Ahram, the largest Arab daily newspaper, saw America’s reaction as nothing short of an anti-Arab racist slur, particularly as investments from Asia and the European Union are taken in stride in America.

It was more so for the tiny wealthy emirate which for years graciously and secretly hosted American war ships, combat and spy airplanes, in its ports and airports, allowing America to keep an eye on Iran and Iraq.

Insult was added to injury when several American politicians including Senator Dole, and Secretary of State Albright’s company the Albright Group, also signed on as lobbyists for Dubai. Mr. Dole took the contract with the same spirit he displayed in Viagra – greed.

Ms. Albright, who spent the better part of her tenure as secretary of state in the Clinton administration applying sanctions on Arab and Muslim countries including Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, demonstrated her own brand of chutzpah when she signed on to lobby for the Arab sheikdom for an undisclosed amount.

Altogether, American politicians demonstrated that prostituting oneself is very much part of the democratic process America is pushing on other countries.

Ghassan Tahboub, a senior executive in Sheik Mohammed’s executive office who is tasked to oversee the press in Dubai, expressed a widely shared sense of betrayal here when he told the New York Times on March 1: “This was America? There are lobbies, politics and interest groups, and Dubai found itself in the middle of a jungle. In the end I have to thank everybody there for this lesson.”

There may be reasons for opposing or approving the purchase of the British port management company by Dubai, but they should come from other American quarters in the intelligence community and security areas, not opportunistic politicians angling for publicity or former ones out to line their pockets.

Now that a 45-day waiting period has been approved to examine the details and consequences of the deal, it is likely that Dubai will pass the test but emerge bloodied, with its reputation in tatters. By all accounts, under existing rules ultimate control over what goes in or out of American ports rests with the U.S. Coast Guard and Immigration and Naturalization Services. The operator – be it a Dubai company or a British or Singapore-based entity – only manages the business angles of regulating the movement of ships and collecting fees for the service.

What went wrong here is that both Dubai and America created the appearance of impropriety where there may have been none based on what we know so far.

Dubai, which has nothing to hide and a lot to flaunt – its modernization and social tolerance – should have invited members of the legislature and the unions operating the port months ago to see it for what it is: a liberal, Western oriented oasis in a sea of Islamic fundamentalism.

The fast- expanding emirate is no virgin in the world of global acquisitions. In the past year alone, it purchased a $1 billion portfolio of 21,000 apartments in American Sun Belt cities; a 2.2% stake in the automotive giant Daimler-Chrysler AG for another $1 billion; and a Manhattan landmark building, 230 Park Ave. The emirate also made major purchases in other countries, notably a $1.5 billion takeover of Britain’s Tussauds Group.

For its part, the Bush administration which made the fight against terror its mantra, should have known that a certain amount of public vetting is necessary for any Arab country, regardless of its credentials after September 11. America was attacked by Arabs. To attempt to sneak this deal through an opaque approval process behind congressional backs, handing it over to second-ranking bureaucrats in the treasury and intelligence community, is at the very least dumb.

If Dubai is worthy of American trust, there was no need to vet its deal in smoke-filled backrooms by a committee of faceless bureaucrats. If it is not, its deal should have been scotched with quiet diplomacy that would have saved face for an Arab friend.

Mr. Ibrahim is managing director of Strategic Energy Investment Group, a political risk consultancy in Dubai. He can be reached at ymibrahim@seig.org.