Actually not. The pipeline would have carried natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan; wasn't oil and the US wouldn't have received it. The US was alternately trying to bribe and threaten the Taliban to drop OBL and deal with the West. Carrots and sticks, the tools of diplomacy ever since.
People will perceive what they will; there's no effective way to preempt perception and any action, or none, will fuel some perception that we don't like. At that point in time it wasn't about what we would or wouldn't tolerate, it was about trying to maneuver that government into becoming a bit more tolerable.
I see no reason why we should need a "coherent point of view on Waahhabism"; our problem, whether with governments or individuals, is what people do, not what they believe.
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