Can there be any heroes without honor?

There is a debate taking place in the US about whether armed forces veterans should be called 'heroes'. Many veterans express discomfort with the term and some say that a simple 'thank you' will be enough. They say that they were merely doing their duty by serving their country, as others had done before them. Some feel uncomfortable when they are asked about body counts and how many enemies they killed. David Botti, a veteran of the US Marine Corps, has made a documentary called 'What Makes a Hero' in which he asks veterans about their reactions to being called heroes. One reason that veterans are uncomfortable at being called heroes is that World War II was the last war that the US won, albeit by committing massive genocide by using atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Korea ended in a draw and after that it has been one humiliating defeat after another - in Vietnam, Afghanistan and in Iraq. The reason the US lost these wars was because they were not based on any principle but on false narratives. Real heroes were those who fought in the American civil war, which was based on the principle of equality for all, regardless of skin color, and the end of the disgusting practice of slavery, so eloquently expressed in the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln. Contrast that with scoundrels, like Dick Cheney who defended torture and Donald Rumsfeld who shrugged off the loot of Baghdad with " stuff happens ". In WWI 53,402 US soldiers died in combat and 291,557 died in WWII but only 1,742 died in Afghanistan and 3,527 died in combat in Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died in the war, countless more died in the sanctions on Saddam Hussein. People died in indiscriminate bombings, dismissed as 'collateral damage' by the US. Where is the honor in that? Drones have reduced the act of killing to a video game where people sitting in Nevada kill people thousands of miles away without seeing the consequences of their act. American veterans are used to ticker tape parades when they return from war but the glorification of killing has bad effects. Over 10% of prisoners on death row in the US are veterans of the armed forces. The causes are put down to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and to poor economic conditions which do not guarantee respectable jobs when they return. The US won Baghdad by bribing senior officers of the Republican Guard to betray Saddam Hussein. The US makes strenuous attempts to protect its soldiers unless they are caught red handed. Few involved in the Abu Ghraib prison torture have been punished. Robert Bales has been handed a life sentence and 4 Blackwater guards received 30 year sentences while maintaining their right to shoot innocent civilians. There is no honor in one sided killing. That is why there are no heroes and the US keeps losing.