How do you force a makefile to rebuild a target

You could declare one or more of your targets to be phony.

A phony target is one that is not really the name of a file; rather it is just a name for a recipe to be executed when you make an explicit request. There are two reasons to use a phony target: to avoid a conflict with a file of the same name, and to improve performance.

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A phony target should not be a prerequisite of a real target file; if it is, its recipe will be run every time make goes to update that file. As long as a phony target is never a prerequisite of a real target, the phony target recipe will be executed only when the phony target is a specified goal

The -B switch to make, whose long form is --always-make, tells make to disregard timestamps and make the specified targets. This may defeat the purpose of using make, but it may be what you need.