I guess if you are putting the word in quotes, then the word is whatever you say it is.

Certainly Joseph has another definition of "hero." and then there are sports "heroes" and the "real life heroes" in Readers Digest who used to give their kidneys to drowning babies for use as floatation devices.

Certainly if you were in France or the Philippines in mid 1940's or Kuwait in the early 1990's the people who drove out the occupiers might have looked like heroes to you. But obviously there were places where they would not have been so venerated.