Mad At America

It was a cozy, intimate dinner party for some of Brussels' leading lights, held at the home of one of the city's premier architects. Leonard Schrank, the American chief executive of the financial services firm Swift and president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Belgium, took a seat next to an elegant woman he recognized as one of Belgium's richest people. During the pre-dinner chitchat in a room full of museum-quality contemporary art, she ventured offhandedly that it was "good that the Americans got hit on Sept. 11. Maybe it taught them a lesson."

"What the hell...