Afghanistan: Oliver Lee, Royal Marines - Moral Courage, above all, it’s about doing the right thing

Land, Sea & Air - Stories from the Armed Forces

Oliver Lee resigned over the Marine A controversy and epitomises moral courage. He took over command of 45 Commando in 2009 as it came back from Afghanistan. Knowing they’d return in 2011 and to fulfil his vision of “Less violence, more engagement with people and culture… It’s about Afghans before anybody else” he ensured that the entire unit “all played a part in the production of the plan…What I was trying to do was to persuade young hard charging Royal Marines, whose last experience was Sangin, to operate in an extremely different way.”

The unit distilled their operational design into 10 principles such as “Always: Treat Afghans with dignity, use the minimum possible force, think clearly even when angry and afraid, always place Afghans first…”

During the tour these values “were lived by every day…What was achieved was remarkable…an 86% reduction in violence…That led to mission success which was a transfer to Afghan lead security authority 12-18 months ahead of the plan…There was not a single piece of collateral damage inflicted by us. There was not a single civilian casualty caused by us and we brought everybody home alive” something “I never thought even possible. In bandit country we did 7600 patrols over that six months and everybody came home alive…It was a remarkable tour.”

However, for the last three weeks, Oliver's command increased to include that of Marine A’s unit “Very sadly, it was during that three weeks that Marine A committed his battlefield atrocity so it was during the period of my command, which I therefore felt I had to carry some responsibility for even though I didn’t know him, I didn’t know that unit, I hadn’t prepared them, I hadn’t led them for the vast majority of the tour. Leadership is about carrying responsibility.” Oliver shares his unique perspective on this as well as the action he took next.

“Moral Courage…Above all, it’s about doing the right thing.”
Oliver Lee delivering a speech on a beach to 45 Commando's before their deployment to Afghanistan and Oliver talking to Channel 4 News about Marine A.

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