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The U.S. military strategy was flawed.  It assumed that applying massive firepower to inflict high casualties on the enemy ("attriting") would destroy their willingness to fight.  Probably an invasion of North Vietnam was required to deprive them of their ability to sustain their military effort in South Vietnam.  But President Johnson refused to authorize this action because he feared triggering Chinese intervention, which might lead to World War III.  Although  U.S. forces consistently dominated the battlefields with their numerical, materiel, and technological superiority, the tenacious North Vietnamese outlasted the American public's tolerance for a war that seemed to never end, and U.S. forces finally were withdrawn without having suffered a tactical military defeat, giving the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) their opportunity to crush the inferior Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and secure a strategic victory.

P.S.--I am a Vietnam veteran who served with a U.S. Army artillery battalion in I Corps during 1969-1970.