I must admit that there is something inherently compelling in Goldhagen's argument, according to which in the face of mass atrocities the international community should abandon its never-ending legalistic deliberation, and proceed to used force to stop the suffering. To stimulate discussion, Goldhagen challenged us with the hypothetical question - "we are in the eve of a new Rwanda; the UN does nothing - what do you do?"
When thinking of it, this type of reasoning is reminiscent of the classic torture-ticking bomb scenario, questioning the prohibition on torture in a hypothetical situation in which we know for sure that it might prevent the detonation of a ticking bomb.
While both questions intuitively carry at least some moral weight, they both run into the same practical difficulty: such hypothetical situations almost never arise in real life. Both ticking bomb and "eve of genocide" scenarios are more fiction than fact, since we cannot identify them in real-time.
Thus, it is questionable whether both scenarios should be used as bases for sweeping legal reforms.