I have heard it said many times over the past few days, that George H.W. Bush is the “last president who has seen combat.”

I don’t fancy myself as a grammarian or much of a wordsmith, but I want to quibble just a bit with the term “last president.”

It connotes that there will never be another individual who will have gone to war in defense of the nation. Granted, President Bush is the last of The Greatest Generation — the World War II generation — who will become our commander in chief. Those of that generation are in their 90s now. Korean War veterans are right behind them. The Vietnam War generation is in its 60s and 70s; I know because I am one of them.

However, as the latest midterm election has demonstrated, we have elected a number of veterans who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Let us also not forget those who served in Somalia, or the Balkans or during the Persian Gulf War.

It is to the nation’s great credit that it is electing men and women who have answered the call to duty just as their military forebears did centuries earlier. They are serving in elective offices throughout the nation, at many levels of government.

One of them, maybe more of them, are likely to ascend to the nation’s highest office eventually. That is my hope, that they will carry on the tradition demonstrated by so many of their presidential predecessors — such as George Herbert Walker Bush.