If the Taliban had any intention of attempting some sort of armed attack on the airport outside of Kabul, it seems that the chaotic conditions on the ground are doing their work for them. A new report from CBS indicates that gunfire has been heard on the tarmac yet again. Rather than a military offensive, the Taliban seems content to begin a spin campaign, spreading rumors that American soldiers are firing on the Afghan residents who are seeking to flee the country. In the midst of all this chaos, all flights out of Kabul have now been suspended as the US Army and Marine troops attempt to clear the runways and restore order. But with no new flights leaving (at least for the moment) the backlog of panicking people is only growing.

Gunfire rang out at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul Monday amid chaos as Afghans flooded the tarmac in hopes of fleeing the country in the wake of the Taliban’s lightning takeover. CBS News obtained video of some bodies on the tarmac.

U.S. troops reportedly fired into the air to try to control the crowd, but all evacuation flights were halted temporarily as the situation deteriorated. The Taliban claimed that U.S. troops had opened fire on civilians, killing and wounding some.

The Pentagon did not immediately reply to requests for comment from CBS News.

I find it unlikely in the extreme that the American troops there opened fire on a crowd of unarmed civilians unless they were in danger of being physically overrun. But it’s not surprising at all that the Taliban would try to use this chaotic scene to their advantage by spreading rumors intended to turn the sentiments of the locals against the Americans and our allies.

This complete shutdown of flights is actually the second phase of suspensions of operations at the airport. Last night it was reported that all of the normal, civilian flights out of Kabul had been canceled and the only heavy transport aircraft taking off were reserved for American and allied personnel, along with their families and staff members. (CNN)

The Biden administration has curtailed the number of government-sponsored flights to the United States for Afghans who worked alongside the US as it prioritizes the evacuation of American personnel from the country, three sources familiar with the situation told CNN.

The last flight for the time being of Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applicants and their families bound for Fort Lee, Virginia, has left Afghanistan, four sources said.

It’s not hard to understand why this decision was made. As the spreading panic and chaos engulfed the area around the airport, obviously we were going to have to get our own people out first. But at the same time, that decision will almost certainly play into the hands of the Taliban as well. As the locals watch the Americans and their families depart for safety and they remain behind on the tarmac, Taliban supporters will be saying, ‘look. Do you see how the Americans are abandoning you?’ Such propaganda is probably as effective as it was predictable.

This situation only highlights what some of us have been saying for weeks now. Our withdrawal from Afghanistan was obviously rushed and not well planned out in advance. While we still had full control of Kabul, as well as the international airport and the airfield at Bagram (which should have been the last facility to close down), we should have been quietly taking our Afghan helpers along with all nonessential personnel out of the country before the Taliban realized what was going on. Swapping out more American civilians in Kabul with the additional troops we wound up sending in anyway could have vastly reduced the total number of people we would need to evacuate when the Taliban inevitably closed in on the capital.

Defenders of the current administration will obviously decry these types of observations as more “Republican pouncing,” but we have to face up to reality here. George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump all had to fight the war in Afghanistan. Joe Biden’s only job was to figure out how to extract us without it turning into a complete debacle. The final “plan” the Biden administration came up with has been an obvious failure and one that may still turn out to be deadly for far too many.

Comments made by Biden and members of his administration over the past month about how capable the Afghan military was and how the Taliban would never be able to overrun the country demonstrate how badly they misjudged the situation. And it remains the responsibility of the Commander in Chief to manage situations like this. This was never going to be easy, but it could have been a lot easier than this. And when we’re finally done with this withdrawal, people are going to have to be held accountable.